Comment by miles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by miles | Hacker News Reader

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Southwest Airlines, passengers claim different causes for cancellations https://www.khou.com/article/news/national/southwest-airline...

> The nationwide cancellations came as the airline announced Monday that the company will now require employees to get the COVID-19 vaccinated by Dec. 8.

> Some customers said they were told the cancellations are a direct result of the vaccine mandate.

> “I asked them specifically 'is this about weather' – because if it’s about weather, they can deny compensation. They said 'no, it’s not about weather.' I said 'is this about maintenance?' They said 'no, it’s not about maintenance.' I said then 'what is the problem?'" passenger Ron Frank said. “They said this is all because of the vaccine mandate. They said we had a massive walkout. They also said that air traffic control had a massive walkout because of the vaccine mandate. But to couch 1,000 cancelations because of a thunderstorm somewhere is not believable.”

Why downvote a link to a local news outlet?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHOU

Bullet, meet messenger.

I was, at first, very skeptical that so many people would walk out of the their jobs in a seemingly organized way, until I heard about the PTO angle of the story.

I work at a company with “unlimited PTO” (because business leaders learned that they pay less with “unlimited” than they do with accrued). But in previous jobs, it was very common to accrue PTO (up to 2 to 3 weeks worth). Most employees would find it hard to get coverage or approval for taking time off, so their PTO would accrue until it maxed out. Anytime I was going to leave a job where I had banked PTO, I would take my time off, and then resign when I came back because if you leave with accrued PTO, they would pay it out, taxed as supplemental income, which is at a higher rate.

3 weeks is a common max accrual for folks that have worked somewhere longer than a year or two, and looking at the calendar, we’re almost exactly 3 weeks from November.

These workers are getting (PTO) paid to strike, plus they’re not breaking any rules, or committing to resigning (or being terminated due to COVID policy), yet. Three weeks to take a much needed break, speak their values, and not miss a check? Now that sounds more like human behavior.

PTO usage generally needs to be approved, I can't imagine Southwest approving enough time off to shut down their operations.

If employees are using PTO by claiming they're sick (assuming there's no separate "sick days" they would normally use), Southwest might have recourse to deny paying PTO but whether or not they will is another question.

> They also said that air traffic control had a massive walkout because of the vaccine mandate

This doesn't make any sense at all. If a vaccine-mandate induced ATC walkout was the cause, all air carriers would be disrupted, not just Southwest.

I suspect this is someone pitching his own views about a situation he doesn't know the true cause of.

Not necessarily, because it depends which city your hub is in. Other airlines might have issues connecting to that city, but if their hub is in a city that doesn't have heavy anti-vax presence, then they are only slightly impacted.

Jacksonville FL, for example is a major SW hub, and was completely shut down. Similar issues exist in two other major SW hubs - Houston and Phoenix.

Also, not all other airlines have mandated vaccinations. ...and those that have aren't in heavily anti-vax cities.

There's also public statements from the JAX ATC saying that their absentee rate was normal and that most of the employees that were out that day were out because of mandatory time off for _getting the vaccine_.

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