Southwest, mechanics still negotiating for a contract after four years of talks
At the start of 2016, Southwest Airlines was in the midst of protracted negotiations with three of its largest labor groups as the company, the dominant carrier at Houston’s Hobby Airport, continued its transformation into the country’s largest domestic air carrier and increased its presence on international routes.
Tensions escalated over the following months as pilots, flight attendants and mechanics picketed at airports.
Now, with the year nearing its close, Dallas-based Southwest has managed to strike deals that will provide significant pay raises to two of those groups.
But the third — the mechanics — still don’t have a deal in place, and the sides remain seemingly deadlocked over what maintenance will be done in-house and what work will be done by third-party contractors.
“The membership has been excited — they’re thinking that after four years, we’re going to be next. But it seems like we’re not getting any- where,” said Bret Oestrich, director of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, which represents 2,300 Southwest mechanics and inspectors.
Southwest has taken a slightly more optimistic outlook, with the vice president of labor relations, Mike Ryan, citing recent progress after over four years of negotiations.
Ryan said the company is eager to put in place a deal that would give Southwest’s mechanics industryleading wages. But to do so requires some changes that would give the company more flexibility in how it allocates maintenance work between in-house and third-party workers.
To the union, however, the changes required to achieve that flexibility threaten their long-term job security.
Southwest has always outsourced most of its maintenance work, which is common in the airline industry, with about 75 to 80 percent of its maintenance dollars going to third-party facilities.
But as the company’s fleet continues to grow and new planes are brought in, as well as continued expansion on international routes, the company is seeking to change parts of its maintenance program.
The company said the deal it’s proposing would increase the amount of maintenance work done by its own mechanics, although the types of work might change.
But some of the changes Southwest is requesting — in how it backfills positions when a worker is absent or how it handles maintenance when a plane breaks down in another country — would require changes to long-standing language in the mechanics’ contracts. The union is reluctant to budge, seeing the company’s requests as part of a continuing push to outsource more work.
More talks are scheduled this week.