Amy Robinson:
Today's SWAPA number is $11.9 million. That's the amount of money lost in pure training costs alone from the pilots who have left Southwest since December of 2021.
Mike Panebianco:
That's a lot of money being lost to attrition and it doesn't take into account the loss revenue from those pilots no longer being here to fly the schedule as published.
Amy Robinson:
So on today's show, we spoke with NC chair, Jody Reven and NC members Damian Jennette and Kurt Heidemann about where we stand with regard to negotiations and what comes after the SAV at the end of this month.
Amy Robinson:
I'm Amy Robinson.
Mike Panebianco:
I'm Mike Panebianco, and here's our interview with Jody, Kurt, and Damian.
Amy Robinson:
Let's go ahead and start with where we're at with negotiations. Why don't you go ahead and tell us what's been happening lately, Jody?
Jody Reven:
Well, frustrating couple of weeks. Leading up to that, we had brought up some concerns that we've passed general expenses 22 times collectively, and so there's not a lot of topics to cover that haven't already been agreed to. We're down to just a few in each section and that's the extent of the work that was assigned and accomplished by the Company ahead of this. So our proposal, we were about to go into the training section, which we knew could be fairly lengthy, and then we only had one more section to cover there. We knew we were going to get through those fairly quickly. Sure enough, day and a half and everybody was done presenting and we were trying to fill the time and I think the mediator thought, "Well, this is going to be a pressure situation where they'll have to agree. They'll have to close out these sections, and until we get a look at where the Company is in their other work rule sections, it's almost impossible to close something like reserve or training until we know how they interact with other parts of the CBA."
Amy Robinson:
So was there any pressure from the mediator to push that?
Jody Reven:
To an extent. There was the idea that, hey, you need to cite your sources, your references since they put our reserve back into the old book. They did a half-hearted effort at that, bringing our proposals over, where in the past, it would just be lost. Instead of coming over at least as a struck proposal with red lines on it, sometimes they wouldn't bring anything over at all. So it was almost like swapped again or forget or they're going to forget that they asked for that. So some of those have made it into the... Basically, we've rewritten the old book and still, both sides are hesitant to agree to a document because it's just work intensive to compare the two and try to form it into one, much less what they're going to have to do with our three sections that we proposed that they're going to have to do the same thing with.
We can't even get that from them to see how, for instance, schedule execution, how it interacts with reserve and some of the other items, because frankly, they just refuse to bring it back. It's been 12 months since we got any work rules from the Company except for reserve.
Mike Panebianco:
So from the top of the mountain, we've seen some of the reports have alluded to the fact that Southwest is unaware of the environment that they're negotiating in. I find that hard to believe. What do you think is their strategy for behaving in such a way?
Jody Reven:
Yeah. It's a very new team and it does seem like they're still in that mindset of, well, I'll trade you this for that. If you really want that, you have to trade this. And as you said, we're not in that environment. We're in a seller's market for pilots, and we see the marketplace coming up around us. Mr. Kuwitzky, this week, was frustrated. It's something Damian said. Why don't we just wait till all of the contracts are settled before we negotiate a deal? And Damian was just trying to point out that, hey, the market is moving, so we need to get this nailed down, and that seems to be what we're doing. It seems to be the Company's strategy is to wait and see the entire landscape of the major carriers and what they agree to and then somehow just match that to lock in their costs as opposed to a concept of being industry leading somewhere.
Amy Robinson:
But to get to even industry standard, some things you guys are just behind on in the general rule. Are they asking for concessionary items in places that wouldn't even get you to industry standard?
Jody Reven:
Yeah, and this is this kingdom empowerment type of thing where, for instance, the idea of 10,000 pilots doing 10,000 reimbursements as opposed to just paying a guy a flat rate to get his flight physical every year and just having it automatically go into this checking account. At first, there was this claim that somehow AI was approving all of our medicals and there wasn't another person on the other end of Concur, approving. Then there's now the latest statement is that Concur doesn't cost anything extra per occurrence because they have this guaranteed amount in their subscription. Then we ask, "Well, is that going to go up once we start putting 10,000?" Well, we don't know. So we haven't really fleshed out these issues. We've just given those little kingdoms the ability to say no without any good reason, except we just don't want to.
Mike Panebianco:
We watched the exchange that you added in the last, not this past strings attached email, but the one before it where you talked about just discussing the reserve.
Jody Reven:
Yeah.
Mike Panebianco:
Is this more clear?
Jody Reven:
Yeah, that's frustrating, frustrating statement. I even gave him a chance to walk that back later. Did I really understand you? Are you really saying even though your language is less clear, you insist that we still stay in that language? We can't put this more clear language into the book? Our interest is to maintain current book.
Mike Panebianco:
So a lot of new members are going to be listening to this and they want to know why it's taken so long and why is this continuing, but on that point, when you say current book, what does that mean and why is it so important that we go to new language just so that people that maybe aren't following as closely, that they can catch up?
Jody Reven:
Sure. I think the deterioration of our relationship, the pilot group and the union with the Company has been over arguments about what our current language from the 2016 CBA meant when it said a certain thing. Irregular operations is a perfect example. It's the one that they brought up in the room. They won the right to assign a certain way and declare a sick call in Baltimore an irregular operation in Oakland and reassign. So they won the right to do a thing, and we've said this over and over, it didn't mean it was smart, but it also caused a lot of chaotic reassignment solutions across our system and the pilots are fed up with that. So that's just one small example. If we had a shared mental model, as they like to say at the training center, of what was going to take place when there was a sick call, for instance, or when there wasn't a physical backside in a seat, how are we going to fill that, if we all understand and we agree to the language, those disagreements in that relationship can improve.
But when our contract has nebulous language in it and it's been manipulated and interpreted a way for a cheaper solution or in this case, of all non-reassignments, not even a cheaper solution, it's just a path of least resistance for somebody sitting behind a computer screen when they're making that decision. So we need to get those things ironed out and have the two of us both understand going forward if we're going to bring this relationship back together what our CBA language means and not that statement of we prefer to keep it vague. That's putting words in his mouth, but that's exactly what he means, we prefer to keep it vague and open to interpretation.
Mike Panebianco:
Is the level of trust that the membership has in the Company supportive of old way or new way?
Jody Reven:
Yeah. I don't see all the time when we do polling a pure mandate, let's say. Hey, well, there were like a 30% for this and 24% for that and 20% leave it as it is, but this one, this support for a rewrite was 95% and I seldom see numbers that high in any poll outside of a membership vote that are that definitive.
Amy Robinson:
Kurt, what is your sense of the mediator's take on working from the contract 2020 versus current book?
Kurt Heidemann:
Well, I don't want to put words in their mouth, with either mediator, but I'd say both of them recognize that our language, like the Company says, is cleaner. It's more understandable. Now, they don't have the history and the background of our current book, but the short version for the mediator is they just want to get a deal and working from current book is probably a faster process if both parties agree to that because they don't have to start from scratch. But they recognize that SWAPA is not prepared to negotiate out of current book. That's, as Jody said, not the mandate from the pilot group. So they're neutral, I think, as far as which book to work out of. They just want us to work towards a deal if that answers that.
Amy Robinson:
And is it the C-suite's direction to work from current book? I'm just curious. Is that coming down from them or is this internal?
Kurt Heidemann:
We've heard different things. We've heard it was internal and then their SMEs wanted to do it and then they were being told from outside and then they were being told by legal, the reasons why it have evolved over the last three plus years. We're not exactly sure, but I do think that they're mostly negotiating tactics more than anything else.
Jody Reven:
Yeah. This has been attributed, to Kurt's point, I'll jump in too, is several folks have been given the, "Hey, this was attorneys for Southwest who aren't comfortable with those language change or things that have been arbitrated in the past and they're worried about losing past practice." We hear from some of the subject matter experts in small groups that, "Hey, I'm not allowed from my boss," meaning Carl Kuwitzky, "I'm not allowed to work from your copy. I acknowledge it would be easier just to work from your copy, but I'm not allowed." So yeah, that evolves. It evolves each week of why we can't work from the rewrite copy.
Kurt Heidemann:
I'd also like to just jump in and say that part of the rewrite or a big part of the rewrite isn't creating a new process. It isn't reinventing the wheel. A lot of our rewrite, particularly in the scheduling sections is just codifying current practice. We sit across from people on the Company's team that have been doing their jobs for two plus decades and they are the expert, but guess what? They're going to retire sooner or later and that tribal knowledge goes with them. We don't know who comes and replaces them, so we just want to write down this is how vacations are awarded or this is how lines are specifically built, those kind of things that they say, "Well, we've never had a problem with it in the last 51 years," as Carl likes to bring up. Well, that's true, but we're having more problems and rather than continue to add onto that pile, let's get this stuff written down because we're not a mom and pop operation anymore. We're a multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 company. We need to have structure in how we operate with this pilot group.
Mike Panebianco:
So you said it a couple of times, but a lot of the membership talks about Carl. For those that are new, Carl used to be SWAPA president who took the job over as the senior director of labor. Can we get a deal done with Carl in the room? Is it Carl or is it somebody else?
Jody Reven:
Sure. Casey and I talked about this early on. There are folks with a white-hot passion hate this situation that our former president is negotiating against this. We had new hires. One of the new hires actually said, "Wait, let me understand this. Your former union president is negotiating against you." And we said, "Well, yeah." He said, "Well, I'm going to update the Delta app." Some people just have this vehement hatred of that. I, on the other hand, I feel like the Company can pick whoever they want. It's their right to have whoever they want in the room, but just like the online reassignment, sometimes you have the right to do something and it's not smart. Certainly though, we can get a deal. We can get a deal, we have to get a deal, and it's part of the RLA process to do that, but this makes a deal tougher to ratify for all of us.
Kurt brought that up and it hurt one of their subject matter experts, their pilot subject matter expert. It hurt his feelings, but Kurt was saying this is an obstacle to ratification because guys are going to look at it with a more critical eye. That's just the nature of this situation that we're in.
Mike Panebianco:
Guys, we hear a lot, we get a lot of questions in comm about some of the points, some of the asks that we have. One of the big go, no-go comments we get from membership is about retro pay. What is a retro bonus? What is retro pay versus a retro bonus? What is the NC's view on retro? I'll ask a follow-up question after that.
Damian Jennette:
All right. Well, the first thing I have to mention is that we have proposed a ratification bonus and the Company has not. That's an email we get quite often from folks from a previous podcast. The Company has not proposed anything. What is a ratification bonus versus true retro? In 2016 when we did this last time, it was a ratification bonus or it was a bonus and a ratification structure is what we called it. We made sure that each zone, in other words, each time period that we were looking at, because there's inflation involved with that, each one had an inflation built into it. So whatever you flew for that time period, you got paid that difference of what that amount would be. Like Delta in their last deal, they had a bonus, but it didn't have any inflation built into it. It was just a X amount for this period, X amount for this period and so it was just a giant bonus.
It also did not have a NEC or non-elective contribution applied to it. Ours did back in 2016 and so that's how we wrote our letter of ratification, letter of agreement for this ratification bonus as well. So it has NEC, profit sharing is applied to it, and of course the wages.
Mike Panebianco:
The follow-up question is, is the retro going to be offered to retirees?
Jody Reven:
Absolutely.
Mike Panebianco:
What about the pilots that, let's say we have a five or a seven or a 15-year FO or a captain?
Jody Reven:
Not structured, not in our proposal. It's curious to me that that's never been mentioned. Maybe it hasn't. That detail hasn't been read because they haven't actually looked through it, but I would think that would be something a guy who's bailing would want to know money's coming.
Amy Robinson:
Damian, I'm going to ask you, the Company put out some comm on market-based cash balance plans. Can you give the listeners a really quick rundown of what they are? It came out of nowhere, so I think people were a little confused on where that was. We have educated on the past, but it's been a little bit, so if you would go ahead and give us a rundown on that.
Damian Jennette:
Yeah. The Company, oh, gosh, it was a couple of sessions ago, they were trying to, I'm not going to say get us in a corner, but they were trying to nitpick the market-based cash balance plan. The provision for one of the funding, they were trying to get that through the private letter ruling process. But the issue with that though is we have two other funding mechanisms. The one that they're trying to introduce is just one of the three and it's really a secondary to us because the other two are actually more important for us. But the market-based cash balance plan is nothing more than a defined benefit plan, but it's not like your granddad's old retirement pension plan. It's the new hybrid plan. So the funding now, as I said, we were looking for three funding mechanisms. The Company is only picking and choosing one that they would like to pursue because everybody else has it. Delta has already got it in their LOA. United had it in their failed TA and American in their failed TA had it in there as well.
All three of those are just 415 [inaudible 00:17:33]. We would like more than that. But the broad strokes of the market-based cash balance plan, the funding pieces or the cash preservation is the amount of money that goes in that's contributed on your behalf at retirement has to be available when you actually retire. So if a dollar's put in each year for five years, $5 has to be available when it comes out. The good thing about market-based cash balance plan is the way it's invested, it can just follow the market. So in a couple of bad years, it could have a negative value just like your 401(k) could as well. It's just at the very end, the Company has to guarantee that that $5 in that example that I gave you would be available to the pilot. But we're just not quite there yet. We're still working through it. I'd say both the legal attorneys are getting closer on it. We're getting close. It's just a funding piece.
Mike Panebianco:
One hot topic on our social channels right now is the email that just came out with strings attached, the sick leave buyback. What did we mean when we talked about haves and have-nots? Because that seems to have taken on a life of its own in some of the chat, some of the back and forth-
Jody Reven:
Sure.
Mike Panebianco:
... with the room.
Jody Reven:
Sure.
Mike Panebianco:
Just highlight what that means.
Jody Reven:
Yeah. I would say if you would've put this proposal, and they harken back to a time where one of the previous SWAPA presidents is now the lead negotiator against us, they actually agreed to a stock options type of scheme where the more senior you were, the more stock options you got and the lower the strike price. Some people got very lucrative deals and then some of the junior people did not. It's very similar to that, the way they proposed it. If we were all just talking about 100 cents on the dollar for your sick leave at retirement, that would be closer to the same benefit for everyone, but this one also has the problem of changing the accrual. But if you actually did the yearly math on that, it comes out to about half of what our current accrual is, which is something they've offered in the past. Our board of directors said this is not a concessionary contract, so it was DOA, unfortunately, it's current state.
Amy Robinson:
Are they coming any closer to us in terms of benefits or any other specific sections you could share where it does look like there might be some positive movement?
Jody Reven:
Sure. I don't want to minimize what a sea change just that idea of monetizing sick leave was because that's been something that's been in our deal from the beginning and contract 2020 was a buyback upon retirement. We've also proposed some ideas of a yearly buyback as a productivity nod. So that is big. I would also say that we all know on both sides of the table that we have to address our STD and LTD. It's going to happen. So now we're just wasting time on what it looks like and how fast we can get this put into language and where sick leave fits into that. So yeah, I'd say there's been some movement and there's been some acknowledgement that we are behind the industry in that area.
Damian Jennette:
But to what Jody was talking about, we being behind the industry and that they want to do the swap, we've talked about that a couple of times that they would like to swap sick bank for the disability plan. The problem is the disability plans have been so far behind for so long just to get us back up to bar. There's no swapping for that. The bar is just set so low and we have to raise it so high and this is just not a concessionary contract. We've probably agreed in benefits alone to about 10%, so we still have a long way to go in that.
Mike Panebianco:
So even given the DOA strings attached offer on sick leave buyback, Kurt, what do you feel the strategic value of making that offer this week was? What do you think the purpose was on that?
Kurt Heidemann:
Yeah. We've been talking about this as a group and I know that some people think that maybe they're dropping this out there as a divisive tactic to divide and conquer as we go into that SAV. I don't think they'd mind if that was the case, but I think it's a little bit bigger than that. I think that they have explained. The story that they've told since the meltdown and even before is the only reason we're having these operational problems is because we have a sick leave problem. All of our pilots are calling in sick. If those bad employees would just stop calling sick, the operation would heal, and that's what they're telling Andrew and Bob and I think that they've sold them on that storyline. I think that's what the C-suite believes now, and so we can't minimize the value of this offer. It's over a billion dollars worth of sick trips. Let me point out too, it's a billion dollars that we already have in our banks. It's not like they're creating an additional billion. They're monetizing the billion that we have already earned over years and decades.
I don't want people to think that this is that, but I think that they've told the C-suite that we have this problem and so the C-suite has signed off on this deal to get the sick bank resolved. I think that that's more what it's about, is trying to go along their storyline of the operation. They'd rather do that than actually look at some of the fixes that SWAPA has proposed through our scheduling sections to make the operation fixed.
Amy Robinson:
So the accusation on their side is that we're dragging our feet. Is that true or false?
Jody Reven:
Yeah. I would challenge anybody to look at the difference in the products that are being provided at both of these negotiating sessions, whereas we got down to the fact that we only had two sections in our possession and the Company had 14, I believe. I don't know where SWAPA is the one being accused of stalling. You just refuse to bring us data and you refuse to bring us offers. We've also offered to meet some in small groups. Unfortunately, when we meet in Dallas, there's lots of challenges with that where people have a meeting and they leave early or a hard stop or they got to go to the deck party or whatever competing thing is going on at the GO. We have brought anything that the mediator has asked for and more. We turned deals and offers within 24 hours while we're at the mediation sessions where this last opportunity, the Company had both reserve and training and they chose not to counter either one while we were in San Antonio. We had to bring those back to Dallas to the decision makers.
I don't understand the idea, that stalling is a good idea in this marketplace, but that's definitely what's going on. It seems to be the number one best thing that they are at, stalling.
Amy Robinson:
When you're talking about stalling, we know we keep publishing these numbers of people, the attrition rates over and over and over. Is anybody there or anybody that you can tell, is there any acknowledgement of that or is it still just a blatant like it's fine, we don't have a hiring problem?
Jody Reven:
I think they started to acknowledge that. At the beginning they said they disagreed with our characterization of the marketplace and even our numbers. So then we just started showing them employee numbers and screens. I'm like, "Do you disagree this person currently no longer works here? He literally has in your data that QT written on his schedule and the rest of his trips for the month has been pulled. Can we agree he quit?" So that denial part has stopped. In the beginning I heard, "Oh, we're hiring as many from those carriers," and so then we showed them the numbers. No, you're not. This is not sustainable. Now, we've just started a blame game of, well, it's because of SWAPA's comm and it's because of the SAV even though the number one place they're going is Delta who held an SAV right before us.
So I believe from the top down, that's starting to be recognized. My evidence would be they put out a [inaudible 00:26:18] the other day saying that they had canceled an upgrade class, but they made sure that they said, "This is not because of attrition. This is because of lack of instructors." So it's definitely being talked about.
Amy Robinson:
When you're talking about the attrition numbers, obviously, there is a cost to training these people who are then leaving. Do they respond to the fact that they're losing money even in that particular vein?
Jody Reven:
Yeah, I think there's acknowledgement of the cost. It's undeniable the cost there. I guess we just keep hearing lots of creative reasons why this is taking place. Oh, they're trying to subvert SkyWest's flow-through, or they're trying to jump the line to get into one of these bigger carriers that has a flow-through agreement where you would have to rate your turn. But once again, just like the IROPs and the reassignment, it doesn't matter how that seat became open. There's no longer an ass in the seat and how are you going to fill it? The same thing could be said for this. It doesn't matter if they were trying to subvert a flow-through, if they were never going to stay here. There are currently a hundred of them that have left this year, and for some reason, they're no longer staying here. Last year, they were, and two years ago.
Amy Robinson:
For our pilots who don't know, what is the cost to train a pilot?
Jody Reven:
We've gotten to north of $75,000 by the time they go through the training center. That doesn't encapsulate everything. You still have your check airmen costs to go into giving those sims, going out and flying an IOE, the hard line that they had whenever they came in and gave their two weeks notice and you pulled the rest of that with pay. Some of that stuff hasn't even been considered. So you're talking in the 90,000 range depending on... Let's say a guy's been here for four or five months or even two or three years. How much did you pay out in his sick leave when he left, his benefits, his NEC? So it starts getting up north of three digits pretty quickly.
Kurt Heidemann:
And let's not forget opportunity cost. That's the big thing. That's the part that is finally getting their attention.
Jody Reven:
Yeah, and the part that we haven't really talked about a ton and SWAPA has started some preliminary costing is your failure to capitalize on your stated market plans going forward because you don't have enough pilots. We can go back and say the excuse is, well, we have an excuse. We don't have enough instructors. We can't get enough people through the training center. But what is your excuse for the hundred plus pilots that have left this year? What did that do to your marketing plans and the tickets that you were going to sell and how many airplanes you could have flown had they stayed?
Mike Panebianco:
I think we talked about this maybe a little bit earlier, but given that the membership is zero trust already because our pay audits have been so bad, I think we're almost 13 million since we started doing, we had to hire people to do audits because they're so far behind the scheduling abuses, the deadhead inflation, all the things that we've talked about endlessly over the podcast, do they seriously think they're going to escape rewriting the scheduling portion of our contract? Because I think that's the big question that I continuously hear.
Jody Reven:
Yeah. I think that's the only reason for stalling on passing those back, because in the beginning, it was we're going to hold compensation to the end. Then we had a big disagreement on section one. Well, we're going to hold section one to the end. And now we're holding the three scheduling sections to the end, seemingly. I think at the point where you throw some money at something and then you say, "Hey, well there's no time for the rewrite now if you want to have this great amount of money.," And we've tried to say over and over again. Guys know the money's coming. The marketplace is showing you what the money is going to be. The mediator even said, "I think we know where pay rates are going," and the Company agreed. Andrew Watterson has said to new hires, "We have to match Delta." So then it comes back to the work rules part. Unfortunately, our CEO and COO have been sold the bill of goods or at least they state these talking points that we can't afford SWAPA's scheduling asks.
That's frustrating because I don't believe they really understand them. Bob will freely admit I'm not a work rules guy. He said that at the board of directors meeting. The Company costed our leg change override proposal, but we've beat this to death. They costed incorrectly because they added it to daily reassignment pay instead of replacing daily reassignment pay. That's a very theoretical cost and it's very honest on SWAPA's side because they took every single duty period, but still it's theoretical because the idea is that when you program your Sky Solver with a leg change override, it will bias someone that doesn't cost an additional amount. It'll leave the what we call the sunny day pilot, the guy who has nothing wrong with his schedule, the idea is it would pass him over and go to a volunteer. So you ought to be able to plug a hole in the schedule right there at that spot and maybe you pay that one person a time and a half to do that as opposed to your reassignment where you pay five people time and a half for the move up.
The idea is that if a guy gets put out and just gets beat up for a day, then yeah, you compensate him more for it, but your computer reassignment tool should be programmed so that it looks for an option that's more efficient. All of this costing for LCO, it's humorous to me because it's like they don't have an interest in letting go of that ability to keep schedule in chaos. It's gotten so bad that the Department of Transportation is actually investigating Southwest Airlines on their ability to run a successful schedule of over 4,000 flights a day and still we're holding on to this management right's ability to reassign in whichever way they want. SWAPA is actually, instead of just trying to capitalize from a financial standpoint on that chaos, we're actually trying to provide some solutions to it.
Mike Panebianco:
Guys, let's shift just to another topic that we hear about when we do the roundups, when we're out at the rallies. What are the expectations? What's a reasonable expectation for the membership? When do we think we might see a deal? What should we do through the summer?
Jody Reven:
Yeah.
Mike Panebianco:
What would you share with the membership, just your opinion from what you're seeing in the room and what would you recommend they do?
Jody Reven:
I think that guys ought to be able to go out and work as much as they can right now, build their war chest, have that discussion with the family and what their financial goals are going forward. As far as a deal and how fast, I would say we could get to a deal by the end of the summer, except that we're meeting every other week and we're stalling with what we bring and hiding behind the NMB. So until we start negotiating in earnest, I can't give you an updated clock. What I can tell you is happening over APA today is over the last couple of weeks, they've gone seven days a week, 10 hours a day in negotiations, trying to get a deal in earnest. We're nowhere near that. SWAPA's a willing partner. The Company's not. When the Company becomes a willing partner, we could be four or five months away. We just have to make sure that the language is correct.
Mike Panebianco:
We've seen the Company repeatedly communicate, and actually I think they did it twice in this week's update that they meet on the mediator's schedule and the mediator picks the topics. Is that a valid and whole statement?
Kurt Heidemann:
Well, it's true. We do meet on the mediator's schedule and we do meet on the mediator's agenda, but the mediators basically sets the minimum, and that's the key part that I think that gets lost or maybe slightly misinterpreted in their comm. Whatever the mediator says, we're going to bring, but we should and we do always have contingencies. This last session that Jody talked about that we finished up with extra time was because we have nothing left to present, that we don't have anything that we can have as a backup because we're waiting on sick leave, we were waiting on reserve, we're waiting on the other work rules. The Company always has the opportunity to bring more. We always have the opportunity to meet in extra sessions with or without the mediator. If the mediator's unavailable, we've made it clear that we can meet outside of mediated sessions as long as they're productive and they're going to keep tabs on that. That's the plan going forward. As Jody said, we are ready to meet. We're ready to go. It's a minimum that they're talking about.
Amy Robinson:
Jody, you have said that you would ask for at least a self-help as soon as we get the SAV votes at the end of May. Do you think the NMB will allow that?
Jody Reven:
I think that depends on what happens between now and then and how many sections that the mediator feels that we're in impasse on and how great the Company's workload is. So far with their track record, it doesn't seem like they're really trying to turn too much of the contract proposals. Tom will tell we've done everything to uphold the RLA process and put ourselves in a position to be released. I haven't seen any evidence that the Company is really ready for a deal. If you ask me today based on what you've seen, I would be asking today to be released if the SAV was finished. Certainly next week, they could come with some great proposal and we start negotiating in earnest daily, and we've offered that and we're available to do that. Like I said, that's going on across town here at APA. They're literally meeting seven days a week right now.
Mike Panebianco:
I just want to make sure that the membership hears this and everybody else hears this. You just said that you'd be willing to meet daily-
Jody Reven:
Sure.
Mike Panebianco:
... with the Company to get this thing done.
Jody Reven:
Sure, absolutely. Absolutely. My only disagreement on that that Bob Jordan and Andrew Watterson witnessed was the Company saying, "Okay, let's just meet in Dallas." What we've seen in the past is they come up ill-prepared or they have competing interests or they have, even in their own building, a lot of times they don't have a subject matter expert available to talk about a specific thing. So we have found that when they travel, the work ethic goes up a little bit just because they hate to travel and they hate the life of going through the airport and having to go through security and that pesky flying on airplanes. That seems to make people come with more work ethic sometimes and so that would be our only hesitation. But we've offered to meet in the off weeks, it's just it hasn't been taken advantage of.
Amy Robinson:
Do you think there's any chance that we could have a deal this year?
Jody Reven:
Yeah. I get that question a lot. Honestly, mechanically, I believe we could. I would hope that the Company realizes the dire position they're in with attrition, but hope is a horrible strategy for a negotiator. What we have done is everything that the RLA will allow with the SPC, with the pickets, with the SAV, with the soon to be requesting to be released. Our job is just to put us into a position where we can get a deal this year. I will tell you that there's been no stone left unturned and that will continue to be the case going forward as we make things a little boring, comfortable with negative leverage.
Mike Panebianco:
Thank you to the NC for taking the time to talk to us today. We know they've been busy trying to gain progress in the face of a lot of stalling on the Company's part and doing their very best to get us a rewrite that we need so desperately.
Amy Robinson:
As always, we'd like your feedback. If you have any podcast ideas we have not already covered or any SMEs you want to hear from, please let us know at [email protected].
Mike Panebianco:
Finally, today's bonus number is 1,000. That's the number of days post amendable our contract will be at the end of the month. That happens to align with the closing of our strike authorization vote, which opens May 1st. Please remember to vote and SWAPA would appreciate your support. The NC would appreciate your support by voting yes.