Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly on Tuesday did an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos where he said “We’re not going to fire any employees over this.” It sounds like the pilots won.
But the airline did announce on October 4 that all 56,000 Southwest employees working in the United States had to provide proof that they were vaccinated against COVID or they would be fired.
When asked about it, Kelly told Stephanopoulos there is “no evidence” that any kind of demonstration against the mandate contributed to the massive flight cancellations and service disruptions over the holiday weekend.
Yeah, and I’m Mary, Queen of Scots. Over 2,000 flights were cancelled and pilots are speaking out that they called out sick as a response to the mandates.
“There’s just no evidence of that,” Kelly said. “Our people are working very hard, they’re doing a great job, I’m very proud of them.”
Evidence abounds.
WATCH:
This is the single bravest thing I have seen in years. God bless these Pilots. The heroes we need right now 🇺🇸✈️ pic.twitter.com/ZxuRseDoAq
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 11, 2021
Kelly acknowledged that the vaccine mandate is “very controversial,” and he said it was not something he wanted for his company.
“This is a government mandate, it’s a presidential order, and we’re doing our best to comply with that according to the deadlines that have been set,” Kelly said.
Actually, the order is not official yet. Biden wrote an executive order based on no authority, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has yet to produce the order. Maybe because Southwest is a federal contractor and the executive order is enough, but Biden still didn’t have the authority to create a new law and without a power behind it, that’s exactly what the executive order is. Congress did not pass any law about vaccine mandates for the COVID vaccines, therefore, the president has no authority.
Kelly told Southwest employees last week that the company had no choice and had to comply with the Biden regime’s vaccine mandate because the airline is a federal contractor.
“Southwest Airlines is a federal contractor and we have no viable choice but to comply with the US government mandate for employees to be vaccinated, and — like other airlines — we’re taking steps to comply,” Kelly said.
Well, the pilots disagreed.
Biden signed his executive order last month requiring all federal employees to get vaccinated, and that included federal contractors.
On September 9, the tyrant Joe Biden announced his plan to force all private sector businesses that have more than 100 employees to mandate their workers get inoculated with the Emergency Use Authorization COVID vaccines, or do weekly testing. It’s been over a month and OSHA still hasn’t provided any documentation or guidance for the tyrannical order.
A month later, no official guidance on the alleged mandate has been issued by the White House, OSHA, or the Department of Labor.
During the interview, Kelly stated that Southwest would not be firing any employees who refuse to get the jab.
“We’re not going to fire any employees over this. We’re urging all of our employees to get vaccinated. If they can’t get vaccinated, we’re urging them to seek an accommodation, so we’ll do everything we can to support our people here,” he said.
Last week, Kelly told employees that the provisions for medical and religious exemptions “are very limited.” Not cool.
The CEO allegedly lied when he told Stephanopoulos that all the pilots called out sick because of COVID and COVID quarantines, but you just watched the very convincing video of the pilot saying otherwise. I think the company realizes they’re in a real pickle. They have to keep flights going in order to stay afloat, and Kelly is trying to make it appear that he doesn’t have a mutiny on his hands over the vaccine mandate.
“It’s just a more difficult working environment out there, and we’re doing everything we can to serve our customers well, and also take very good care of our employees,” he said.
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On Monday, an official with Southwest admitted that staffing shortages played a role in the cancelled flights over the weekend.
The carrier originally blamed inclement weather and air traffic control issues that caused the thousands of flight cancelations.
“On Friday evening, the airline ended the day with numerous cancellations, primarily created by weather and other external constraints, which left aircraft and crews out of pre-planned positions to operate our schedule on Saturday,” Southwest said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, the out-of-place aircraft and continued strain on our crew resources created additional cancelations across our point-to-point network that cascaded throughout the weekend and into Monday.”
On Monday, Southwest Chief Operating Officer (COO) Mike Van de Ven in a memo acknowledged to employees that Southwest “is still not where we need to be on staffing, and in particular with flight crews.”
A pilot who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the reaction to the vaccine mandate over the weekend was “organic and decentralized.”
“We will not be following our traditional staffing models as we reevaluate where we are in October, November, and December,” Van de Ven wrote. “You come first.″
