AMFA-Southwest Negotiations Update — January 25, 2019
AMFA, the union representing the aircraft maintenance technicians (AMTs) employed by Southwest Airlines, have been working without a new collective bargaining agreement for more than six years. On Thursday January 24 and Friday January 25 we were back at the negotiating table in an effort to reach a fair conclusion to this long process.
In an effort to reach this conclusion as quickly as possible, we kept our latest proposal in November strictly economics-focused. We were hopeful Southwest Airlines would respond in similar fashion and present a counterproposal that focused on economics as well.
However, in addition to concerns about the economics proposed by Southwest this week, negotiations were complicated by the introduction of new “offsets.” These included items like allowing “outsourced heavy maintenance to be performed by an international vendor” as well as limiting our duty day.
We continue to hope that we can reach agreement on a suitable contract for our technicians. We will meet again with Southwest in February, and continue to update on the progress of negotiations.
