The RLA does provide labor with a substantial amount of leverage if labor knows how to take advantage of the RLA.

The RLA is not tilted against labor. It is not tilted against management.

It is, however, tilted against the less-informed side. Historically, in the airline industry, in negotiations with pilot unions, the less-informed side has almost always been labor. Thus, the impression has arisen among pilots that the RLA is biased against labor.

It's not.

Sadly, most pilots know next to nothing about the RLA. Often, what they do know is based on myths and urban legends they picked up from parts of stories they heard on the news or ideas passed on to them by equally-as-misinformed "buddies."

Management and the consulting attorneys they work with are typically far better educated and up-to-date on the subject of the RLA than pilots or the unions who represent them.

FordHarrison, for example, is one of the leading labor relations law firms that most airlines in America use to formulate strategy and tactics designed to defeat pilot labor unions on the battlefields of the negotiating room and arbitration table. Think of them as hunter-killer robots programmed to minimize your compensation, slash your benefits, and ravage your work rules. They are very, very good at their job.

They are the type of folks SWAPA is up against.

Meet Andrew D. McClintock, for instance. He's a partner in the Atlanta office of FordHarrison's Airline Group. FordHarrison also has Airline Group offices in Washington, DC, Chicago, NYC, Orlando, Tampa, and Los Angeles. Andrew has been with FordHarrison since 1994. He was a Senior Editor for the most current, Fourth Edition, of The Railway Labor Act,considered the most authoritative treatise on the subject of the RLA available. When we negotiate against SWA, we are also negotiating against guys like Andrew and his entire team at FordHarrison.

Each year, FordHarrison hosts an "Airline Labor & Employment Law Symposium." In 2022, some of the topics presented at the symposium included:

• Recruiting Foreign Pilots to Solve Staffing Shortages
• Contract Negotiations in the Employee-Centric Environment
• Hiring and Retention Strategies Amidst a Global Labor Shortage

The antidote to defeat at the hands of SWA and its hired guns like FordHarrison begins with knowledge. It is distressingly sad that a terribly large majority of our pilot group hasn't devoted, even once in their career, a similar number of hours that they commit each year to passing their annual check ride to studying the RLA and the strategies that spring from effectively employing it.