Audrey Stone doesn't hesitate when asked how long
current contract negotiations will last between Southwest Airlines and the
flight attendants union she leads.
"As long as it takes," Stone said on a
recent morning in Baltimore – a city she has called home since 2004 despite
regular commutes to Dallas, where Southwest is headquartered.
As president of the Transport Workers Union Local
556, which represents more than 10,500 Southwest flight attendants nationwide,
Stone is the lead union representative at the table with the airline as the
parties negotiate a new contract that will have broad implications for the
airline's workforce.
For decades, Southwest has been known for
relatively peaceful negotiations with its various worker groups, a reality that
industry observers chalk up to an in-house mantra of valuing employees – the
company's stock ticker symbol is LUV – and the strong unionization of the
company's workers.
But negotiations with some of its unions –
including ground workers – have stretched for more than two years as the
company attempts to adjust its workforce amid growth, Stone said.
The company is growing, having acquired AirTran,
and is eying new overseas markets, and growth often prompts efforts to change
contracts, airline industry analysts said.
Company proposals have been floated to scale back
sick-leave accrual and other benefits for some work groups, Stone said, and she
doesn't know if that represents an across-the-board culture shift for the
company that she'll have to confront.
If so, things could get bumpy in coming months, as
her talks with the company shift from agreeable aspects of the flight
attendants' contract to issues of benefits and compensation, Stone said.
"Our negotiations are really going to be the
test for whether the culture has really changed," said Stone, a Texas
native who lives in Mount Vernon, Md. "We're prepared for similar
proposals, but hopeful they have learned after protracted negotiations that the
employees are not going to stand for it."
Stone entered into negotiations with Southwest
officials in June.
Brandy King, a Southwest spokeswoman, said the
company's goal in negotiations with all of its workers is to "remain the
best place to work" and to secure the company's future.
"In order to achieve this goal, we are always
looking to improve efficiencies; reduce unnecessary costs; reward our
outstanding employees; and continue to partner with our work groups," King
said in a statement.
She declined to discuss specific issues of
contention in the company's current negotiations with flight attendants, saying
the company has "an obligation to discuss these directly" with union
officials.
Stone said much is at stake.
One issue of concern for flight attendants is how
the airline intends to work out logistics with its new, larger Boeing 737-800
planes, which carry more passengers than the standard Boeing 737 and thus take
longer to board, disembark and prepare between flights, Stone said.
The turnaround of a 737 takes about 20 minutes,
while a 737-800 takes 45 minutes to an hour, Stone said.
Flight attendants are paid per hour while flying,
but aren't paid when not flying, so "from the flight attendants'
perspective, the time of their day when they're not getting paid has
increased," Stone said.
The hourly wage for Southwest flight attendants
starts at $22.36 for new employees to $56.29 for the most senior, according to
Stone.
Flight attendants wonder how Southwest will expand
its routes in coming years as it takes on AirTran's "near
international" routes in Central America.
Seniority issues with the hundreds of incoming
AirTran flight attendants already have been worked out, with Southwest flight
attendants getting an extra 2 { years of seniority over their AirTran
counterparts, Stone said. But tensions remain as AirTran flight attendants
transition to Southwest hubs.
About 2,200 AirTran flight attendants were in a
separate union at the time of the acquisition, Stone said. Between 500 and 600
will have transitioned to Southwest by the end of this year, she said.
Seniority is a major issue for flight attendants,
because it is a key determinant in how they get to select routes, hubs and
schedules.
As Stone and other union representatives negotiate
their new contract, they will likely keep job security under the acquisition at
the forefront of their minds, said Lee Hays, a former aviation contract
negotiator and an assistant professor who teaches aviation labor relations at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Amid such transitions – and the "continuing
shake-out in the aviation industry, in which the major players, what we call
the legacy carriers, are simply looking to expand their routes and grow" –
there come a "lot of labor issues," Hays said.
As companies like Southwest are watching their
bottom lines, unions are keen on maintaining "past practices" that
benefited them and avoiding new policies that could chip away at the
protections they have won over the years, he said.
"If I were a flight attendant at Southwest, I
would be saying, 'As they bring these (AirTran flight attendants) in, we'd love
to have them, as long as they aren't replacing us,' " Hays said.
According to Michael Boyd, president of the
aviation consulting firm Boyd Group International, the idea that
Southwest
might lose touch with its positive labor stance amid the transition is "a
legitimate fear" to have as the company grows.
"As you get bigger, lines of communication
get stressed," he said. "With the AirTran transition, there is always
going to be a little bit of heartburn."
Still, Boyd said he doesn't expect too much
trouble at the negotiating table after decades of labor peace at Southwest.
Stone said she's ready for the back-and-forth that
inevitably comes with high-stakes negotiations.
She is younger than her predecessors and is the
first woman to be the local's president in 13 years, despite the union
membership being about 80 percent women. But that, she said, has only
translated into more support from the union's membership.
Back in 2004, Stone was working in public health
when she decided to become a flight attendant and travel for a few years. She
thought it would be an adventure before going to graduate school.
Once at Southwest, however, she felt she had
become part of a family, she said.
"We have always been given the freedom to be
more ourselves on the planes, to joke with customers," she said.
It's that culture she wants to protect in whatever
contract she signs off on, she said.
Source: Philly.com
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