The Yahoo Finance Live team discusses Southwest Airlines stock after Southwest's pilots voted to authorize a strike.
Video Transcript
- Let's get to some individual movers as well. And Southwest is one of them, facing some possible turbulence after pilots for the airline voted for a potential strike as extended contract negotiations come to a head. Now, we don't know yet if the strike is actually going to happen. This is authorization for a strike. And they called an early end to voting after all of them. I mean, was pretty overwhelming, this vote to authorize the strike.
- Yeah, this is not the first strike that we've seen authorized. Not all of them actually go through to a full-on strike that disbands or at least impacts some of the day-in, day-out operations. We had seen one from American Airlines. Of course, that was earlier this month.
Even the Delta Pilots Union, they were able to come to an agreement eventually and negotiate with the executives and leaders. And we asked and spoke with Delta CEO Ed Bastian about that in the past for about two quarters at this point. And so usually these net out well for the pilots. And this is right for the pilots to do, considering the changing fleets of aircraft that they're also going to be asked to pilot or to steer the ship on.
And so what they're asking for within this specifically and what the Pilots Association that represents about 10,000 pilots for the Dallas carrier, just taking a look at the authorization vote, it closed after a week and a half, 98% participation, 99% of pilots voting to authorize the strike. And the statement saying that the lack of leadership and unwillingness to address the failures of this organization, of the organization, have led to this point. And the pilots are tired of apologizing to passengers on behalf of-- get this-- a company that refuses to place its priorities on its internal and external customers there. So those are some fighting words, as. We would call them here on this Friday.
- Yeah, most definitely. So we'll see if the strike actually ends up happening now.
- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
