Back To The Southwest Denver Memo

While Southwest has acknowledged that the memo above, leaked via a Twitter post from an insider, is authentic, it has denied that 120 or more Denver ramp agents quit in response.

Southwest Airlines says rumors that as many as 150 ramp agents in Denver walked off the job over the last few days after an internal memo from management told staffers that they would be directed to do mandatory overtime or face the threat of termination are unfounded.

Operations in Denver have been under strain as a result of Winter Storm Elliot, and ramp agents have been working outside in treacherous conditions and sub-zero temperatures. A Southwest Airlines spokesperson said a decision to ‘rotate’ ramp crew more often was behind some of the long flight delays and cancellations.

Southwest's explanation in effect falls back on the weather as the efficient or proximate cause of its meltdown, but if that were the case, all airlines would have been equally affected. Comments on Twitter and YouTube have made the point that all major carriers have had to deal with severe winter weather throughout their history, and Southwest was the only one to suffer a meltdown over the past holiday week. The CEO of the Denver airport authority made the point in this media interview that Southwest was the only airline at that airport to suffer a ramp staffing problem, whatever its source.

What interests me about the Southwest meltdown is that it's a textbook corporate crisis that's so far been bungled in a textbook way. This site lists a number of corporate crises, some handled well, others badly bungled. Factors that contribute to successful crisis management include acknowledgement and ownership of problems, clear and transparent communication, and immediate and visible corrective action. Factors that can damage a company long term include wishy-washy reaction, finger-pointing, telling lies, and not fixing what's gone wrong.

Given the thousands of canceled flights last week and the passengers stranded as a result, it was an especially bad sign when the Nashville operation called police to inform stranded passengers that their flights had been canceled and threatened them with arrest for trespassing if they didn't clear the area. As I covered at the time, Southwest claimed they couldn't verify this had happened despite a viral video showing that it had. It's in this context that I've got to treat Southwest's insistence that the story of 120 or 150 ramp agents quitting in Denver is just a rumor with some skepticism.

The memo alone isn't reassuring. My wife, a retired corporate attorney, said immediately after she saw it that it must not have been run by legal before it was sent. It turns out her instinct was correct, I found this on an on line forum:

[T]hat’s not just unreasonable, it’s downright illegal according to Colorado labor laws. Southwest can only ask their employees for a doctor’s note after four consecutive days of absence and that’s according to a post-COVID law.

I checked, and this is true. According to this Colorado state site,

Employers can require documentation for accrued paid sick leave (not for COVID-related public health emergency (PHE) leave), but only for absences of four or more consecutive days — and employees can provide the documentation after the leave ends.

The overall tone of the memo suggests that "employees alleging illness" are malingering, and that the ramp agents in general are slackers. It wasn't until the crisis managment stage a week later that Southwest insisted it had been rotating employees out of the weather to deal with conditions, and one thing I note just as someone who sometimes had to write official company announcements was a complete lack of wording to the effect that we understand the difficult conditions, and we're doing everything we can to help during this extreme weather. Nothing -- just come to work and don't go home or you'll be fired. This is just not how you write this kind of announcement.

A week later, the New York Post, having finally gotten a copy of the memo, contacted Southwest about it:

The Post reached out to Southwest for comment.

On Monday, the Dallas-based company finally cited weather and staffing issues at Denver International Airport for setting off a chain of events that led to massive, systemwide disruptions that began over the holiday weekend and extended into this week.

But this, again, doesn't answer the question of why every major airline and airport deals with cold and snow as a matter of annual routine, and in this particular case, Southwest's week-long meltdown was unique. No other carrier had an equivalent problem. And as the Post story put it,

A Southwest Airlines executive warned of a staffing crisis at one of its major airports days before thousands of passengers were stranded over the Christmas holiday weekend, according to a report.

It's hard not to think something led to an atmosphere of panic in Southwest's Dallas Mahogany Row that was reflected in the December 21 memo that was rushed out, almost certainly without going past legal, and I would also think that if it contradicted Colorado labor law, the union, which has its own legal department, would have been immediately involved -- and whether or not 120, or 150, or 200 ramp workers then quit, Southwest had a major problem on its hands that should not have happened. The big question continues to be why this happened at Southwest and nowhere else.

A question maybe just as big is how this could happen at what is now the biggest US air carrier. Regulators of industries like banking have been assiduous at making sure the US financial system is not subject to equivalent risks. One problem is that secretaries of transporation in administrations of both parties have largely been political patronage appointments; Mayor Pete's predecessor was Elaine Chao, Mrs Mitch McConnell. This needs to change.

Every indication is we're seeing a textbook bungling of a textbook corporate crisis. Ideally, the political system may need to get involved to solve the overall problem. I wouldn't be surprised if in addition to Southwest executives, Mayor Pete has to go as well.