The theory being spread around is that pilots had a sick-out because they oppose Southwest's vaccine mandate, based on fears about blood clots + flying.
I imagine it is to the advantage of both pilots and SW to not admit it is about the vaccine, because the media would take advantage of that fact otherwise.
Also the pilots can't admit to a sick-out one way or another to avoid legal repercussions.
Not saying this issue is because of the vaccine mandate, but it would make sense with the way this story is playing out.
If it's not an "official" strike then no union negotiation is needed.
If the head of the union said an unofficial sickout was happening, he'd go to jail.
No, saying that other people are breaking the law is not a crime. He’d have some internal problems with membership to deal with, though...
If he said that the union and he as its president endorsed the sickout and encouraged members to participate in it...that might be a different story.
Falsely accusing someone of breaking a federal law, a law that is very important to their job and industry, can come back on you in an epic way given the stakes here. That would be an opening for a giant lawsuit and that's the best case scenario for Southwest if they did something that stupid.
> saying that other people are breaking the law is not a crime.
You do not want that claim to be false - you do not want to be wrong and or unable to prove your out-on-a-ledge position - if you go around making very substantial accusations like that (eg stating the pilots are pulling a sick-out), which can directly threaten the livelihoods/careers of the pilots. If you're wrong or otherwise can't back up your claims, you just made a mistake that will cost shareholders an expensive legal settlement and possibly get you fired.
Of course they can. Executives and unions make accusations of illegal labor relations conduct on the other side on flimsy evidence all the time. And especially when it is nonspecific as to individuals (e.g., alleging a sick-out is occurring without alleging any particular employees sick leave was abused), it is safer, legally, than many of the accusations routinely made between labor and management.
(There might be good political and labor relations reasons for declining to characterize it that way with, or even with, strong evidence that it is true, but that's a different issue than legal reasons.)
> You do not want that claim to be false
Honestly, false or true, it would be suicide for a union President to say it, unless it was part of an internal factional fight in the Union and the faction doing it was already irrevocably opposed to the union president. And even then, its basically admitting that that faction has the power to bring the firm to its knees and you can't constrain them...
The denial by Southwest management is more interesting, since they don't have that kind of legal incentive.
“The sick call rate over the weekend was no different than it has been since June and the pilots actually picked up open flying as well,” Amy Robinson, a spokesperson for SWAPA, told TPG on Monday.
If there is a sick-out but management and the union both deny it, how do they actually negotiate an agreement?