Southwest Airlines this week announced that it would be awarding its employees with a $1,000 bonus following the passage of the GOP tax bill, which the company’s board of directors said would “result in meaningful corporate income tax reform.”
Union leaders say it hardly makes up for years of unfair treatment.
“We applaud Congress and the President for taking this action to pass legislation, which will result in meaningful corporate income tax reform for the transportation sector in general, and for Southwest Airlines, in particular,” Southwest chairman and Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said in a statement on Tuesday. “We are excited about the savings and additional capital, which we intend to put to work in several forms — to reward our hard-working Employees, to reinvest in our business, to reward our Shareholders, and to keep our costs and fares low for our Customers.”
Kelly added that the company was prepared to donate “an incremental $5 million” to charity and increase business investments in Boeing.
Union bosses representing those employees, however, aren’t completely satisfied, saying that many of those same workers have gone without a raise for five years.
“The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) represents more than 2,700 Aircraft Maintenance Technicians (AMT) at Southwest Airlines (SWA). As of today, the Union has been in negotiations with SWA for more than five years (1,966 days), since the contract amendable date of August 16, 2012,” AMFA National Director Bret Oestreich told ThinkProgress in an email. “Although many members are appreciative of the Company’s recent $1000 bonus in response to the newly passed tax bill, this is a small token of appreciation for what the AMTs have endured over the last 1,966 days.”
While Southwest ratified a collective-bargaining agreement with AMFA-represented Facilities Maintenance Technicians (FMTs) in November last year, it still has yet to reach an agreement with its AMTs. Such an agreement would likely award aircraft technicians with protections and benefits similar to the ones awarded to the facility technicians, which currently include a “complete set of work rules, wage scale, ratification bonus, and job protections,” according to a Southwest news release.
“While the Company experienced record profits during this time, our members have not received increases in pay, enhancements to benefits or, most importantly, job security as they threaten to outsource even more work to 3rd party vendors,” Oestreich explained.
He added, however, that he was “optimistic” Southwest and AMFA would reach a “well-deserved, fair and equitable agreement” by the end of the next union negotiation session, which is set for January 18-19 in Washington, D.C.
Southwest spokespersons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Southwest is only the latest company to announce worker bonuses following passage of the Republican tax bill. In December, a handful of businesses — including Fifth Third Bancorp and AT&T — stated that they would be doling out one-time bonuses to their employees as a result of the bill, which carves out massive benefits for major U.S. companies by lowering the corporate tax rate to 21 percent. Many companies also announced that they would be “reinvesting” in their businesses, although, as ThinkProgress previously reported, a large portion of that money will likely be used for share buybacks.
Union leaders at the time were equally unimpressed by those announcements.
“Republican leaders have promised that households would receive, on average, a yearly $4,000 wage increase. They also claimed that the corporate tax plan would produce new jobs in the U.S. as companies return work from offshore,” a spokesperson for the Communications Workers of America (CWA), whose workers are employed by AT&T, told ThinkProgress in an email. “[The $1,000 bonus AT&T announced is] a drop in the bucket compared to what was promised.”
UPDATE: In an email to ThinkProgress on Wednesday evening, a Southwest spokesperson addressed the recent bonuses and related AMFA union concerns. “The bonus is to celebrate the tax reform legislation with all of our Employees. It is not in any way meant to address the contract negotiations with AMFA,” they stated. “We’ve had an industry-leading offer on the table that includes raises for some time now.”
They added, “[We] remain committed to negotiating an agreement that sufficiently rewards our Aircraft Maintenance Technicians, while at the same time preserving our competitive edge.”
This article was originally published at ThinkProgress on January 3, 2018. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Melanie Schmitz is an associate editor at ThinkProgress.
