Southwest Airlines has reached an agreement in principle on a new labor deal with its pilots following more than three and a half years of negotiations and the threat of strike action.
On Tuesday, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said that the agreement in principle would now go before the union’s 25-strong board of directors. If approved, the airline’s 11,000 pilots will vote on the tentative agreement in the near future.
“We are finally at a place where we think the value of our pilots and their productivity is being realized,” commented the union’s president Captain Casey Murray.
“Our pilots and Southwest Airlines customers deserve security and confidence in our future and we believe that this contract achieves that,” Murray continued.
Last month, SWAPA set up its first-ever strike headquarters in an unprecedented move designed to pile the pressure on Southwest to reach a new contract with pilots.
Close to 99% of Southwest pilots had voted in favor of taking strike action unless the airline agreed to a raft of contract improvements, including big pay rises and a slew of lifestyle improvements.
In October, Southwest reached a tentative contract deal with the flight attendant union but the agreement was quickly rejected by crew members in what has turned out to be a tainted ballot that was vulnerable to fraud.
The flight attendant union is now going to rerun the ballot and is looking at taking legal action against the vendor of the voting software it used for failing to secure the ballot.
