November 18, 2020
To All AMFA Members at Southwest Airlines:
Today, October 15, 2020, your Airline Representatives (ALR) and legal counsel attended an electronic meeting with the Company. This meeting was requested by the Company to hear AMFA’s response to the concessionary proposal delivered by Southwest last week. That response from your ALR’s was clear, concise and delivered at the outset of today’s meeting. The Company was informed that we, based on overwhelming feedback from AMFA members, are not interested in the Company’s concessionary proposal. In addition, we advised the Company’s team we are not interested in proposals that would open any of our contracts on property for concessionary purposes.
As discussed in our previous update, we reiterated our willingness to engage with the Company to consider cost saving measures that do not require concessions to our agreements. We again conveyed the need to bring outsourced maintenance in-house to keep our members employed and engaged. We will be working with AMFA’s economist in the coming days to formulate an information request to better allow us to understand the current state of Southwest’s outsourced maintenance footprint and associated costs. We hope the Company will respond promptly and in full to our information request as now is not the time to hide the ball. The Company may try to muddy the waters by pointing to our position during the first meeting that we would not sign non-disclosure agreements (NDA). That is like comparing apples to oranges. We remain unwilling to sign overly broad NDA’s that would limit our ability to communicate openly and remain transparent with you during these turbulent times. You deserve to know what is occurring. We will, however, consider a narrowly tailored NDA that would allow the AMFA economist to evaluate and analyze, among other things, outsourced maintenance costing data.
It is worth repeating that, based on your consistent feedback, we will defend and enforce all three AMFA contracts, which each contain language restricting any reduction in force of our members while Southwest continues to outsource your work. We ask that you continue to remain informed and be wary of furlough fear tactics that will undoubtedly increase as we stand our ground against concessions in the face of the Company’s self-imposed deadline. The solidarity of our members in response to the Company’s recent actions has been incredible. We, as your ALR’s, are grateful for the overwhelming support. Our unity, especially during these times, is our strength.
In Solidarity,
Your AMFA–SWA Airline Representatives