Originally Posted by
thrustisamust
New guy here so please forgive my ignorance. I’ve been spending some time educating myself on the RLA. What exactly are we waiting for to hold a SAV? Did the numbers from the survey indicate the support wasn’t there? At this point it seems like a necessary step and just curious about SWAPA’s mindset as to why we haven’t held the vote.
Yep. No one outside of SWAPA knows for sure.
Having said that, my three guesses are:
- There’s still not a lot of enthusiasm for nor very much comprehension of the RLA process within SWAPA. I’m inferring from our late filing for mediation, from the absence of RLA education, and from the fact that our former president made a drive-by on the forum a few months ago proclaiming that he thinks the RLA is essentially pointless (he still holds considerable sway within our pilot group), that there’s a significant portion of the SWAPA BOD, exec’s, and committee members who still believe attempting to leverage the RLA is a waste of time. I’m sure they are also hearing from members, like ElonMusk, who help reinforce that idea in their minds.
- They have polling data to support that a SAV right now wouldn’t turn out well.
- Similar to my first guess above, I wouldn’t be surprised that a lot of SWAPA pilots are contacting SWAPA warning SWAPA that they better not take a SAV because, given the deep lack of RLA understanding within our pilot group, many of them probably believe that a successful SAV would mean that we’re going on strike sometime soon. That terrifies them because they think if we went on strike, we’d be out of work for a long time (BTW, the median length of a mainline airline pilot strike over the last 26 years is four days), and because, in their minds, it flies in the face of SWA’s “luv” and “coheart” culture.