Hundreds of Southwest Airlines flight attendants are picketing the airline at ten of the major airports it services around the country on Tuesday.
The flight attendants, all of whom are off-duty during the demonstrations, are trying to rally public support for their ongoing contract dispute with the Dallas-based airline.
Dozens of those flight attendants were picketing, holding signs, and speaking with customers at Dallas Love Field Airport.
“Southwest Airlines flight attendants really like to love our company, and today’s efforts don’t mean that we don’t love our company,” said Lyn Montgomery, President of TWU Local 556 and a flight attendant who has been with Southwest since 1995. “But it is a drastic move for us to be out here picketing and saying, ‘Do better.’ It is drastic for us to come out and picket. We don’t do it often and we don’t do it lightly.”
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Southwest’s approximately 16,000 flight attendants have been working without a new contract since 2018, according to Montgomery.
The union has many demands it says the airline has not, as of yet, been willing to meet.
“They are not listening, and they are not responding to our needs,” Montgomery said.
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Among the flight attendants’ demands is the request that they be paid during the boarding process. As of now, Southwest and several other major airlines do not pay their flight attendants during the boarding process, only once the doors are shut.
Montgomery stressed that flight attendants play a major role in ensuring that flights leave on time and that they deserve to be compensated fairly for the work they do to get passengers in their seats.
Southwest has maintained publicly that it values its flight attendants and that it is still actively engaged in the bargaining process.
