TWU Local 556 issued this statement:

Members of TWU Local 556, the union of 18,000-plus flight attendants of Southwest Airlines, need a new contract — and they are taking the fight to the picket lines. On September 27, informational pickets will be held at 11 bases across the U.S. to allow thousands of frustrated flight attendants to raise their voices and demand change from Southwest Airlines, the first carrier to return to profitability post-pandemic. 

The collective bargaining agreement the union holds with Southwest Airlines became amendable almost four years ago. Because of an overwhelming number of delays from the company, flight attendants are left without the changes that are necessary to improve their working conditions. They take to the picket lines while they demand their company listen to their cries via communications that implore Southwest Airlines to Make It Right! 

“Never before in the history of Southwest Airlines have flight attendants’ working conditions deteriorated so rapidly, crippling our quality of life, devaluing our role and creating a loss of spirit,” TWU Local 556 President Lyn Montgomery told Southwest Airlines during negotiations. “Resolution can wait no longer.”

TWU Local 556 is demanding a new collective bargaining agreement with Southwest Airlines that addresses the many issues plaguing its members today that impact the ability of these safety professionals to do their jobs in helping to ensure passengers’ safety and comfort. Those required changes include:

• Paying flight attendants for time worked, including when passengers are boarding and when flight attendants are required to work outside of hours originally scheduled.
• Giving flight attendants control over their personal schedules when not at work, allowing them the liberty they deserve to take care of their lives at home.
• Providing access to food and a safe place to rest when traveling on the job. A lack of hot food and sometimes even hotel rooms leaves flight attendants with little to eat and sometimes sleeping on the airport floor.
• Fixing technology issues that impact passengers and disproportionately impact frontline aviation workers, including flight attendants.
• Creating a modern Reserve system that meets the needs of both the operation and employees, and ending the unsafe practice of putting flight attendants on 24-hour on-call shifts.
• Providing benefits that actually help flight attendants, like health insurance that continues coverage when someone is injured on the job, is battling cancer or had a baby.

Flight attendants, front-line workers who are aviation’s first responders, have endured unprecedented levels of passenger aggression, airline technology failures, reroutes, delays and lack of food and rest over the past few years, in addition to threats of pay cuts from their employer.

“While Southwest Airlines ignores the very real needs of flight attendants sleeping on airport floors because there is nowhere to go, they asked us to take pay cuts at the height of the pandemic, mere months away from a return to profitability,” Montgomery said. “Our union advocated instead for extension of the government’s payroll support programs to help save our jobs. Southwest Airlines was more concerned about what it would message to its shareholders rather than exhausted flight crews and displaced passengers.”

Southwest Airlines flight attendants are taking their fight public with permitted informational pickets at bases 10 a.m. to noon, local time, in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, Orlando, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver and Oakland. For details on picket locations by city, please visit www.makeitrightswa.org.

At the informational pickets, flights attendants and their supporters, including elected officials, members of other unions, family and friends, will chant their messages and hold signs that decry their airline’s lack of concern over its largest workgroup. Some flight attendants have taken to telling their stories via a first-person video campaign on www.makeitrightswa.org and others are sharing their concerns via social media.

TWU Local 556 also has filed for mediation in its contract negotiations with Southwest Airlines, frustrated that years have gone by with no meaningful progress toward a new and much-needed contract.