Posts Tagged ‘sickout’

Are Biden’s Vaccine Mandates About To Destroy The Airline Industry?

Sunday, October 10th, 2021

It appears that the Biden Administration vaccine mandate (for which no written rule actual exists) is doing for the American airline industry what it and other Flu Manchu restrictions have already done for the global supply chain.

  • I’m seeing multiple reports that a walkout by air traffic controllers in Jacksonsville have caused hundreds of flight cancellations:

  • It looks like Southwest Airlines pilots are having a massive sickout over the vaccine mandate.

  • Their union is suing the federal government over it:

    In what appears to be one of the first cases of a union pushing back against the new COVID vaccination requirements handed down by the Biden Administration, a union representing pilots at Southwest Airlines is suing to stop the vaccine requirement from being forced until a lawsuit is resolved.

    Bloomberg reports that the union representing Southwest’s pilots has asked a court to grant a temporary stay against the federal vaccination rules until an ongoing lawsuit over what they allege are violations of US labor laws is resolved.

    In a court filing on Friday, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association also asked for an immediate hearing on the request before a federal court in Dallas, claiming the carrier has continued to take unilateral actions that violate terms of the Railway Labor Act, which governs relations between airlines and employee unions. The “unilateral action” in question is the company’s attempt (at the Biden Administration’s direction) to force workers to either get the jab, or be fired or sent on unpaid leave, Bloomberg reports.

    “The new vaccine mandate unlawfully imposes new conditions of employment and the new policy threatens termination of any pilot not fully vaccinated by December 8, 2021,” the legal filing said. “Southwest Airlines’ additional new and unilateral modification of the parties’ collective bargaining agreement is in clear violation of the RLA.”

    According to the guidelines set out by President Biden (and “voluntarily” embraced by most of the major airlines), Southwest has a deadline of Oct. 4 under the federal mandate for employees to get jabbed or have an approved medical or religious exemption. SW is affected by the mandate because it has contracts with the federal government (like many large businesses).

    The union represents 9,000 pilots at the airline, and a strike could easily disrupt American air travel (remember the air traffic controllers strike in the 1980s?)

  • Keep in mind that almost all the airlines are set to fire pilots that don’t comply. What happens when just about all the airlines are grounded because of employee strikes and sickouts? If you think Biden’s poll numbers are bad now, just wait.
  • It’s not just pilots and air traffic controllers. All sorts of professions, from bus drivers to police officers to ferry operators, are staging sickouts over vaccine mandates in various parts of the country.
  • There’s something about vaccine mandates that are so holy to our leftwing ruling class that they’re willing to tear the country apart to impose them. Some have said money from drug companies, but that explanation seems too simple for how hard they’re fighting to impose them no matter the cost, and the lengths to which the Democratic Media Complex is willing to go to suppress any mention of disagreement with The Holy Narrative.

    This is about control.

    It must be resisted.

    Update: Southwest just cancelled 1,000 more flights. And I’m seeing rumors on Twitter that other airlines crews are joining in: