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Comment by jasonlaramburu | Hacker News Reader

The article also says the head of the pilot's association denied it was a protest against vaccine mandates. Why would they lie?

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The union is denying there is an official action... and my understanding is it would be illegal for the union members to organize a walkout like this since it jeopardizes the public.

Individuals deciding to do something on their own though... can't be stopped.

The Union denies it was an official or unofficial action. Both the pilots union and SWA management also confirm there was not an unusually high number of sick calls. Again, what incentive would they have to lie? Further why would a generally conservative-leaning private company and public union go to such great lengths to defend a mandate they have nothing to do with? It sounds like a conspiracy theory.

You are putting a lot of stock into a PR piece...

SWA is attempting to manage the damage to their brand. It's pretty obvious.

And again, the Union has to deny everything. Any organized walk-out, or something they knew would happen and did nothing to stop ("official or unofficial") is illegal.

So if we can’t trust the union or the company where is everyone getting info that there was a sick out?

Sick-out is speculation it seems.

What we do know is SWA cancelled over 2,000 flights in a single day, and continues to cancel flights up through today... and no other airline is impacted... and the weather issues they claim don't exist... and the ATC issues they claim also don't exist.

Seems pretty obvious something else is going on. Sick out, walk out, sit-in, just refuse to fly, whatever... but the official story can't even carry its own water.

If the company has a uniquely weak flight network I’m willing to buy that a single company was uniquely affected because their flight network is uniquely weak. I’m struggling to speculate on a sickout when there isn’t any claimed evidence I can find besides “the given reason doesn’t seem right”. I’m not a flight industry person, why do I think I know better than all the flight industry heads talking about it? But I do know graphs, and I know chokepoints will fuck over a whole network.

If you'll forgive me for latching onto one piece of information here:

> and no other airline is impacted

Yeah, so... why is that? Other airlines have similar mandates. Is Southwest just uniquely anti-mandate? Did they have a particularly large population of pilots who weren't vaccinated before the mandate even took effect?

If anything, I'd say that the uniqueness of Southwest's problems is evidence against a sick-out and points to a problem in Southwest's business model or logistics.

>You are putting a lot of stock into a PR piece...

No, I believe that absent contrary evidence, the simplest explanation is usually the most likely. I've seen virtually every other US carrier experience a cascading failure due to weather or computer failures at least once over the past 10 years. I've also seen how quickly certain politicians, who stand to benefit personally from casting doubt on vaccine mandates, have jumped on this event.

It’s could be against the Wagner Act for airline workers to strike in this manner. It would certainly invite the intervention and mediation of the NLRB in the matter. By keeping it undeclared and unofficial they head off labor litigation which would ruin the company and create an immediate crisis that required federal intervention. The union also could not sanction such a probably illegal strike. Even organizing such a sick in could be considered illegal given the separate treatment of infrastructure labor under the Wagner Act plus amendments and the Railway Labor Act which does cover airline workers.

Such a strike would likely be illegal and could lead to the dissolution and decertification of the union. Corporate, labor, and the feds all have good reason to run FUD on this in the hopes that it can be settled before it kerplodes into infinity hours of legal bills.

They are denying that they violated the Railway Labor Act because they don't want to go to prison. Pilots's unions aren't allowed to strike or participate in job actions (sick outs). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mediation_Board

Your Pilot Career and Scope Clauses - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XYpZg0SPCE

>"Why would they lie?"

If it would be prudent to do so, and if there is enough reasonable doubt that they could get away with it.

Edit: This is the rationale for telling lies, twisting truths, or otherwise being dishonest. I'm not actually claiming they were indeed lying, just giving a cynically Machiavellian answer.

A sick out requires pretending your are sick. Publicly saying otherwise would be breaking the rules.

It was not a sick out. The article clearly states:

“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.

But the whole point of a sick out is to send a message. I've never heard of a sick out that didn't at least have employees going "oh yeah I'm real 'sick' <wink wink>".

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