Originally Posted by shoelu

The leverage to make contract improvements that you speak of would have been made at the expense of relaxed scope to allow the company to realize synergies earlier in the transaction. That was a deal that SWAPA was unwilling to make. We will not sell our scope for monetary short term gain. Scope is like a religion here. Any scope give concession will never be regained going forward.

You correctly assert that management is not in fact looking out for the pilots directly. But, management is most definitely looking out for the PRODUCT. The reason we do not outsource or codeshare is built around control of the product that is produced. Southwest wants complete and total control of the product they provide to paying customers. For these and many other reasons codeshare is not done at SWA.

You state that management would get rid of the scope clause in order to facilitate an acquisition on a larger scale is completely incorrect. Management cannot nullify any portion of our CBA without OUR CONSENT. Our consent will never be given. We like the way the agreement is written. It provides many disincentives for anything other than internal growth. Our section 1 also provides protections against structuring any deal where another entity would eventually be the surviving carrier after a merger.

SWAPA's scope provides for any flying done for Southwest Airlines, in any capacity, will only be done by SWAPA pilots on the SWAPA Master Seniority List. We do not budge on that. We will not even allow a SWA sticker on another aircraft unless it is flown by a SWAPA pilot.