Very interesting reading. I knew when this thread was started that it would be a bit of a lightening rod. Looks like I was right. Just wanted to take a moment to share a few thoughts. This will be a very long post. You've been warned. If you do decide to read on, please try to finish the whole thing before posting a reply. A question you might have for me might be answered further in the body of the post.
It is obvious to anyone who peruses theses posts that there is a great deal of emotion involved on both sides of the argument.
KC, ELP, and others, I can identify with some of your frustration with how TWU 556 has handled the more public part of the "Contract 2002" campaign. That is not to say that I feel it is a mistake to "take it to the streets" I don't. However, I do think that it is important to stick to facts, carefully choose your target audience, and beware of crossing lines. I was not aware that literature was being slipped under the doors of hotel guests. Leafleting at an NFL game is one thing, football fans can just keep walking if they don't want the info. However, "spamming" hotel guests, in my opinion is crossing a line. It is obvious that in your case it not only failed to produce the desired result but in fact accomplished the opposite. Further, I can understand why one on the outside might think it odd that the TWU NT has not brought some proposals to the membership. Let me try to clarify. First, it is importan to point out that the NT was elected by the membership. While Thom McDaniel as President of the local serves as head of the team, as swagalleyhag pointed out, he(Thom) is just one member of the negotiating team. The rest of the team members made the membership aware of their platforms, campaigned and were elected to the negotiating team by a popular vote of the membership. Once the NT was in place an extensive survey of the membership was undertaken. Another extensive, phone survey has been conducted within the past few weeks to guage the thoughts and feelings of the membership. I took the phone survey and was impressed with the detail the questions went into. It was very obvious to me that at least the intent was to make sure the NT was continuing to press for issues that I, as a rank and file member am concerned with. We were asked very specific questions about what was important to us in these negotiations. The idea was to find out what was important to the rank and file to help the NT prioritize agenda items while at the bargaining table. Essentially, they were asking us for their marching orders.
Now, the results of the survey taken before negotiations began were not by any means unanimous on any agenda item. But, the results did give a clear "mandate" on issues that were important to the membership. In other words, while we are not all in lock-step we are pretty darn close. The issues that the NT currently remains "stuck" on are the issues that we told them were important to us. We understand that negotiating means give and take but again, to really have an intelligent discussion on this issue you must understand that right or wrong the flight attendants at this airline feel that they have done nothing but give for years and we are now attempting to play "catch up". Beyond just the dollars and cents of the pay scale we are asking the company to treat our workgroup the same way they treat the other groups.
Please, please, please remeber we are talking about people here so you have to move beyond just the facts and figures. I have said it before but the point seems to be glossed over so I will repeat myself. The flight attendants at this airline do not feel respected. This contract has become the embodiment of the frustration the flight attendant group feels over how we perceive we are treated. Now, I am sure pages could be written about how in fact we are very well treated and respected and that this is all in our heads but that does not change the fact that perception is reality and that perception is what is driving the membership side of this "argument". Until that perception is acknowledged and addressed we will remain at a stalemate. You have to understand what is like working here...consider. We are constantly being told how successful and financially sound Southwest is...constantly. Glowing newspaper and magazine articles are reprinted and distrubuted to all employees, airplanes are devoted to the company's accomplishments(Triple Crown). It was only a matter of time before this and other unions came to the table with their hands out. But for us at least, once we got to the table, the story changed. All of the talk of prosperity and success vanished and suddenly the sky was falling. The NT hired experts to study SWA's financials and the conclusions they came to was that the raises and work rule changes the membership via the NT was asking for would in fact allow SWA to maintain their low-cost advantage and simultaneously allow the flight attendant group to enjoy an improved standard of living. Pay rates aside there are other issues on the table. Step compression. As it has been pointed out before, the other unions at SWA reach the top of their payscale in 12 years. The company has offered us 15. The NT, through the survey process has been told NOT to TA any proposal that does not contain a 12 year top out. Ground Time is another issue that keeps coming up on this forum and also should be addressed. Try as I might, I cannot understand the mentality behind thinking it is unreasonable to be paid for all work done in the service of this company. My full trip rate? Not necessarily, in fact if my trip rate were high enough, one could say that not paying me for ground time would serve as an incentive for me to work that much harder to get the aircraft off the gate. That would be fine if it were completely within the flight attendants control as to when we push from the gate, sadly, it is not. I believe that it has already been noted that in cases of irregular ops where we are boarded and parked at the gate, sometimes for hours, I as a flight attendant am working tending to passengers, answering questions and just basically meeting the FAA requirement that F/As be on board while pax are on the aircraft. Under the current contract in that situation, I am only making my $2 per diem. This must change. Now, if we push from the gate and sit on the runway, overschedule/overfly kicks in and I am compensated, but in irregular ops situations when we are stuck at the gate I get screwed on pay while I am taking care of you, the passenger. Don't think I should get paid in those situations? Fine. But, as we sit on the tarmac in PHX in mid July, don't ask for a glass of water on infomatiion about your connecting flight or a pillow so you can get some shut eye....I'm off the clock. Getting back to standard run of the mill groundtime. Now, if SWA did not expect me to do much during turns I could let it go. But, the amount of "off the clock" work that I am expected to do continues to go up. Crossing seatbelts and picking up the occasional peanut wrapper or newspaper is one thing..."tidying" a trashed airplane after a full transcon is quite another. Don't assume that like me, the NT is willing to let ground time pay go if other terms of the contract are met. Also, there is middle ground. Duty Rigs and or a second tier ground time pay rate that lets the company keep costs low and simultaneously acknowledges that flight attendants do indeed work while the plane is parked at the gate could very quickly settle this issue. Beyond that this could simply be an issue that the NT is hanging onto so they look magnaimous when they "give in" and let in go in exchange for something from the company.
To their credit, most observers support a "fair" raise. Let's spend awhile talking about why fair or even "fair+" is in order. Remember 9/11? I do. I remember that in the days immediately following 9/11, I was expected to remove and inspect each and every seat bottom cushion onboard the aircraft, in addition to my regular pre-flight duties before the first flight of the day. This is no small feat. The seat bottom cushions are held in place by some pretty serious velcro to keep you from sliding off the frame when the thrust revesers kick in. These seat bottom inspections have since been delegated to another workgroup but hopefully, you get the point. 9/11 changed my job description for the worse. Though we are no longer required to perform the seat bottom inspections, we are still required to do a thorough security sweep before the first flight of the day. Recently the TSA has required that I "sign off" on this inspection and the form is filed with the flight papers. If contraband is later found on a plane that I inspected, I can be held responsible. Additionally, I now have to keep in mind that every passenger on board my aircraft could have ill intentions. I have to look into the face of each and every passenger as they board and to try assess each passengers level of risk. The TSA is supposed to be watching out for us, but the self-same TSA allowed a college kid to hid box cutters in our lavatories. I am not placing my personal safety solely in the hands of the TSA. Should a hi-jacking take place the only thing I know for sure is that if the passengers don't intervene, I and my fellow cabin crewmembers are on our own. The pilots(as they should be) will be safely ensonced behind an impenetrable, reinforced cockpit door that cost more than the average American made last year. It the #$@% hits the fan in the cabin and joe passenger doesn't jump in, I am all that is standing between you the unthinkable. Poorly trained or not, the responsibility rests with me and my cabin crew and believe it or not we take the job seriously. We have the zip-tie handcuffs, just in case. We do our best to hold to cabin security procedures while also keeping you the passenger at ease, fed and watered. It is tough to get a service out on a 40 minute flight when you have to keep stopping to explain why folks can't hold a meet and greet in front of the cockpit door while you wait for the lav to free up. Then of course there is IFE. SWA has thus far chosen to eschew PTVs, drop down LCD screens or even the most basic audio channels. Why? When you, the customer ask, their reply is that it would raise costs. When I, the flight attendant ask, their reply is the "I" as a flight attendant am the inflight entertainment. On top of everything else I am expected to do in a typical day. SWA expects me to enterain you. Not simply serve, protect, and care for you. SWA thinks it is part of my job to put on a floor show. If SWA does in fact opt for actual IFE, this bullet point in my job description will fade into the background. However, with every pretty new 737 that rolls of the assembly line without IFE, the cost of a retro-fit goes up and the chance of the happen arguably lessens. I was hired with the understanding that I was welcome to show some "Spirit" at work if the mood struck but that it was not an obligation. However, as the LCC model has evolved, and the new kids on the block have raised the bar, more emphasis has been placed on moving inflight service from a smile, a coke, and CPR if you need it to a full fledged entertainment experience. This simply adds another layer of responsibility to an already tough job. Ever seen those little children traveling alone? We call them "unaccompanied minors" or UMs. Nowadays in the age of divorce I am sure you can imagine it is necessary for parents to use this service more and more, this in addition to kids going to visit friends out of state and to see Grandma in Tucson. Wanna know what the limit is on the number of UMs that SWA will take on a single flight? ....Give up?....Okay I'll tell you...there is no limit. SWA will take as many UMs on a flight as show up. I myself have had as many as 12, yes 12 on single flight. Two full rows of children between the ages of 5 and 11, yes we take 5 year olds. Nevermind the other 36 people in my section that I was responsible for, I had 12 of someone else's children to care for. Don't get me wrong, I am glad to do it, but UMs when they are well behaved are labor intensive. When they are not well behaved it is chaos. I cannot discipline the child...that is not my place. But I am responsible for keeping them safe while they are in my cabin. I have responsiblity but no authority. The only extra pay, I receive is the extra $2 TFP, I recieve for flying "A" position. That's fine but I say either put a cap on the number of UMs I can be given or thrown in a few extra bucks per trip when the number exceeds a certain threshold. At the beginning and end of the school year when the "custody-swaps" are taking place, the UM situation gets completely out of hand. Beyond the nuts and bolts of what we actually do on a daily basis, think for a moment about the "intangible" impact wages canhave on your workforce. Let's start at the bottom of the seniority list and work our way up. In a business like this, where Customer Service is where you hang your hat, you need to be able to attract "talent". While there is an ample supply of people in the workforce who meet the basic "on-paper" requirements for this job, attracting people who you actually want to seal into a metal tube with your precious customers is a whole other story. At the moment, the majors are in crisis, layoffs abound and there is a dearth of qualified applicants. Right now, laid off inflight personnel who don't want to change careers will take any job at any rate just to say in the industry, especially if the company is stable. However, what happens if and when the industry cycles upward again and the other majors start hiring. A percentage of certain type of person is attracted to the SWA style of flying but, the vast majority of flight attendant "wannabes" are dreaming of Paris and 747-400s not Lubbock and 737-500s. Now we all know that it takes years of seniority to get the good trips with one of the big six but that does not keep qualified candidates from consistently choosing the other majors over SWA or simply biding their time at SWA until the majors come knocking. Again, right now the scales are tipped in SWA's favor, but that can and will change. You buy cheap, you get cheap. You have to be willing to pay a decent starting wage if you want to attract talent. Especially, if you expect that same talent to provide a little IFE. At the middle of the payscale you need to keep the "middling" flight attendants that have developed their skills and can really keep the customers coming back from moving on to other careers or carriers. Don't underestimate the difference a few years seniority can have on your inflight experience as a customer. The basic learning curve is pretty steep...you learn how to get the drinks out and remember you evac and CPR drills. But, with time you begin to really learn the job. Over the years you learn a thing or two. How to cut off a guy who is about to have one too many and make him think it was his idea. We know that a free cocktail won't break the bank and might bring you back in the end. Some, especially FAA rules cannot be broken but company policies can be bent. A more veteran crewmember knows when to pick their battles while the newbies tend to be a tad more high strung. On top of that there is the fact that experience makes the more seasoned flight attendant better equipped to handle the myriad of situations that can occur in mid-flight. We've been there, we've done that and we know what to do. That is the situation I am in. I have been around for 8 years now, 6 of them with Inflight Service. I am fully vested and if I am unhappy with this contract I can and likely will, give my 2 weeks notice, take my profit-sharing and hit the bricks. That or, right when I have actually gotten good at my job, I will transfer and go do something else because I have to fly too much and spend too much time away from home to make a decent living. It may very well be that SWA really only wanted us to do this for a few years and then move on, but nobody told us that. So we have homes and families and bills and obligations and we have to keep working more and more to maintain a basic standard of living. Now SWA does not owe me a certain standard of living, I made the choice to work here, knowing full well how much I would be paid. But, the fact is the people do have an expectation of being able to maintain a certain standard of living and that expectation fuels their discontent with the wages SWA pays. 401k and profit sharing are interesting but more so to the pilot and mechanic group who make "good money" as it is and can give a little in hard pay in exchange for other bennies and still live pretty well. The same could even be said for much of ground ops who make decent wages and can easily work 40+ hours per week and still see their kids at night. We as crewmembers know that travel comes with the job. We understand that there will be times that we just can't be at home, but the amount of time we have to be away from seems to keep creeping up as our trips become less productive. That is where the middle of the seniority list is coming from. They want to be able to bring home say for instances... 40 grand without flying 160 TFP per month. Again, I freely admit that within the economic framework that SWA exists within that simply may not be possible but my hope is to make people understand where the flight attendants who just can't seem to let this go are coming from. In our minds our ability to adequately care for our families is at stake. Can you imagine for a moment that such a mindset could ellicit an emotional reaction from someone? We know that is SWA goes away, so do our jobs but, the membership is of the opinion that SWA has the money to "do right by" their flight attendants and they just don't want to spend it. At the top of the pay scale there is a desire to see some kind of monetary reward for remaining loyal to the company. In lieu of a pension, you need to make a pretty decent amount of money if a 401k is your main retirement vehicle. Especially if your intent is to maintain a decent standard of living and contribute a healthy percentage to your 401k. Profit-sharing and stock options are fine but still relatively volatile. 9/11 proved that hanging your retirement hopes on airline stock is risky business to say the least. Also, you have to remember the lack of monetary savvy some flight attendants might have especially when compared to the pilot group. Pilots and mechanics are numbers and nuts and bolts types of people by nature. Flight Attendants, not so much. That is not to say that there are not plenty of flight attendants that "get it" about profit sharing and stock options. However, by and large, we are living paycheck to paycheck. 401k and profitsharing are not going to help me pay my rent. Hard pay raises will. The NT understands that about the membership and is wisely focused on hard pay first and "perk" pay second. We, as a group tend to think much more "short term" than say the pilot group. That is why step compression to a 12 year top out is so important.
Enough numbers for now let's talk about Jim Parker for a bit. Jim's only fault is that he is not Herb. It starts and ends there. Since the beginning some have wondered aloud what would happen when Herb stepped away from the helm. To a certain extent, those who wondered now have their answere. Herb is lovable, affable, and endearing. Jim Parker is not. Jim Parker knows airlines. He does not know people. Unfortunately, noone has figured out how to run an airline without people so therein lies Jim's problem. Herb made his vision, our vision. We were willing to do more with less because we felt that we were part of something larger than ourselves. We were working for a cause. SWA worked hard, played harder and what the company could not pay in dollars and cents, they made up for in "luv". Just being part of the storied Southwest Culture made you feel privilged to work here. When I started here in 1996 that Culture was still thriving, now it is on life support. I was recently thumbing through "Nuts" and it struck me how at it's core this company is very different from the one the Friebergs wrote about in their now famous book. Sadly, SWA is now just another Fortune 500 Company. What is now playing out at the bargaining table between SWA and the flight attendant group is both sides coming to grips with that reality. Where Jim is failing is to sell the flight attendant group on the currency of SWA culture instead of cold hard cash. Someone said that Jim is "not going anywhere". I agree. Our bottom line bears out the fact that he has earned his place at the helm. But, if this thing were settled tomorrow his relationship with his flight attendants will still be severely damaged. In recent weeks, middle and senior management has really started playing hardball with the membership. For instance, 3 day suspensions have been handed out to flight attendants who wore unauthorized union pins while in uniform at picketing events. Fair is fair, the U plays hardball by picketing, the company plays hardball by issuing suspensions. But the suspensions just come across to the membership as mean spirited and petty. Some of the more vocal union members have seen a spike in the number of times they are selected for "random" drug testing. Inflight supervisors have been coming aboard the aircraft during turnarounds in an attempt to "sell" members on the company's proposal. I understand that if we are going to push, the company has a right to push back but the membership is angry and that anger is focused on Jim Parker. Not fair, but the price you pay for being the boss.
Let's take a look into the future. In my opinion this could end in one of three ways. One way is that neither side budges and the union/company opts for self-help. Either the flight attendants strike or the company locks us out. Either way is breathtakingly expensive for SWA. I would bet my life on the fact that there is already a crash course training cirriculum written and a plan to get replacement workers in the air in record time. It is definitely doable but getting 7,000+ flight attendants in the air simultaneously is no small feat. SWA is fiercely protective of it's public image and being percieved as having fired 20 percent of it's workforce will turn into a media circus. But SWA has tons of cash, and even more credit and could very well decide that getting 7,000 flight attendants on the payroll at starting wages could be worth the trouble. Additionally, Jim Parker would have shown the rest of the Unions at SWA that he is indeed a force to be reckoned with.
In another scenario, the union, fearing insufficient support for a strike "caves" and accepts an offer that the membership is unhappy with but passes by a close margin. The membership fractures, morale suffers and in 4 years we start the whole thing all over again. Option three is that the company and the union NT find common ground and everybody wins. I actually think we are much closer to this happening than many think. I think what one side or the other needs is a way to save face. This has escalated to the point where both sides have too much to lose by appearing to have "caved" to the other's demands. What is most important is that the flight attendant group come away feeling like the company has some regard for what we do. Like I said before. If you buy cheap. You get cheap. People have a tendency to "live down" to expectations. I can tell you that if we feel that a subpar contract has been shoved down our throats, it will eventually show up in the cabin. Close your eyes and picture the kind of apathetic disconnected service some of the other carriers provide. That is the direction SWA is headed in if this thing turns out badly. Those of us who really do care and try our best to give 110% may move on to other endeavors. Those who stay behind will just be marking time. The days of going above and beyond and giving positively outrageous service will be long gone. One of the few things that sets SWA apart will disappear. I will wind this thing up by once again pointing out that this is not just about ground time or payscales, that real people and lives and emotions are involved. Feel free to disagree with TWU 556 in general or their methodology in these negotiations in particular but understand that maybe, just maybe those of us on the inside have a bigger picture than casual observers. It may seem that the TWU NT is keeping us in the dark but the consensus among the more senior flight attendants is that this is the most membership driven contract campaign in decades. We are deluged with information from the union and the NT is very accessible and accountable to the membership. Rather than taking jabs at the union, if you really want answers, get in touch with them there is a contact us link on the savingoursouthwest web page. I personally would not mind my union dues being spent if it helps dispel rumors. Further, when you communicate with us about the contract try to take a moment and imagine how you would react if complete strangers felt compelled to tell you what you should consider a fair wage. I understand that we have dragged this thing into the public forum but saying "Hey 20 bucks an hour sounds good to me you guys should take it" when you don't know the totality of the contract comes across as arrogant, condescending and offensive. All we hear when people say that to is is "You're too stupid to know what is good for you and I'm terrified my ticket price will go up." Likewise, no matter how it is phrased continually telling us that if we make too much money the company will go broke just falls on deaf ears. We hear it all day at work and we agree with the concept but we don't feel that what our union is asking for is unreasonable. Remember that for most of you, once this is over you get to go back to your lives. For the flight attendants this isour lives. Like I said before, tons of info has been dumped on us and if anyone would like to see it, send me a PM and I will try to work something out. I am not that good with computers but I have hard copies, a flat bed scanner and ADOBE Acrobat Reader. I have never created a PDF file in mylife but I am willing to try. Of course, there is always snail mail.
