September 27, 2018
Dear AMFA Brothers and Sisters:
The Negotiating Committee is providing this update to the AMFA Membership at Southwest Airlines. This report is the only official authorized source of negotiating communications by the Committee.
We are a little more than one week following your voice being loudly heard in the rejection of the tentative agreement (TA). We would like to thank all of you who voted, as it may have been the highest participation level in AMFA history. After we received the results of the TA referendum on September 18, 2018, we immediately contacted the Company and informed it that the TA had failed. We then contacted the Mediator and informed her of the result. In addition, we informed her that we are surveying our members to determine the reason(s) the TA was rejected. We requested that she propose dates to reconvene mediated bargaining as soon as possible. The Mediator advised that she would not look at potential dates until the survey concludes.
If you have not received the Survey Notice and Instructions in the mail, please call 720-744-6629 for assistance. The survey will be open through October 9. We want to hear from you! Your Negotiating Committee will be meeting soon after the survey closes to formulate our proposal for presenting to the Company in the next negotiation session.
We have all read the unfortunate piece of correspondence sent out by Russell McCrady following the rejected TA. His letter was threatening in tone and further demonstrated his lack of respect for all of us. His letter was offensive, but as we predicted in our roadshow, the Company quickly resorted to scare tactics as a means to pressure our group. Our solidarity has never been greater, and it is painfully obvious that Mr. McCrady is out of touch with the realities of our workgroup and the strength with which we approach resumption of collective bargaining.
We will keep you updated once we have dates scheduled.
Sincerely,
Your Negotiating Committee