The Response Protocol Agreement is a new agreement between AMFA and Southwest Airlines for any future problems within the nego's between the two. Some policies and procedures were laid out to be followed IF one of the two sides thinks the other side is slowing, harming, or in any way shape or form think there are games being played by either side to stall, slow or in some way deter from coming to an agreement while nego our contracts at the table.
The agreement was overwhelmingly voted to pass by the membership and therefore will proceed to the next court steps of dismissing ALL lawsuits involved from both sides. Each side had 2 lawsuits a piece against the other, and AMFA had an added one on top of those that also personally named individuals just as their suit did with individual employees named.
By coming to this agreement, it is in my opinion, stopped all that crap from continuing to get uglier and uglier. When the new guy (no so new now) Kinder came in, one of his main goals was to restore the relationship between AMFA and the company after that history long 6.5 years to get to an agreement. He is already promoting an extension next time around to keep things moving along smoothly, and as long as this covid crap is much better when contract is due I don't see any prob with an extension and moving onward. Part of Kinders fixing that relationship has now taken place with some movement within the upper management team from the nego table as well as others that were pulling the puppet strings at the table. Thus new agreement was just one of the last final factors that needed to get done to keep things smooth.
One other item to point out. These suits can only get resolved by a passing vote by the rank and file membership by the mechanics. Notice that even AMFA National had no control of how this was getting handled, it was put in the hands of the membership to decide rather to agree with the new agreement and drop all suits or to press forward with all the suits through the courts. You guys at AA would not have this kind of control within your current asso., with AMFA the membership controls the "puppet strings", if ya will. Something to think about while you guys are making a choice of a possible union representational replacement. Sign those cards and allow the membership to take control of their very own destinations. Good luck!!