Originally Posted by Lewbronski

It's 14.7% of the mechanics.

While it completely sucks for these guys and their families that they have to deal with this stress right now (might I add, it's a week before Thanksgiving), in the long term, this is an overall positive for labor as a whole at SWA. Why? Because SWA has taken hostage the one thing that has kept so many people here willing to accept less and less. That one thing is the idea of job security.

These WARN notices are going out. They will be black-and-white evidence for years to come of the fact that SWA is, in fact, willing to turn its back on its co-hearts despite all of their talk about "family" and "luv". And never forget, GK turned down an amount of government financing that would've covered a 10% cost reduction for all employees 15 times over because the conditions attached to the government loans were too "onerous": they prohibited stock dividends and buybacks.

And notice that the furloughs, which are unlikely to actually happen, won't occur until Jan 25 (or 14 days thereafter). That's five days after the inauguration. Remember that they initially said they'd furlough as of Jan 1. Clearly, the company expects to get a new payroll support package sometime between now and 19 days after the inauguration. In all likelihood, this is simply a scare tactic on the company's part. They're hoping to get the first domino to fall by using the WARN letters as a hammer. The rest of the employee groups, in their estimation, will then be so terrified of losing their jobs that they all fall in line.

Don't fall for it. Any of it. And, in the long run, the WARN letters are a good thing for labor at SWA.