To be fair, not contractually, but by bonus. This is to say, your 2nd year pay is lower in the aggregate than first year pay. it's a gimmick. But again in fairness, they're throwing hail mary's wherever they can. I'm very glad the industry is feeling the pressure and the pax are getting upset. This is unfortunately the only currency Americans speak. You gotta hit everybody in their own personal circumstances for them to GAF.
LOL, you mean the SOUTHWEST manning philoshophy? Same s--t over there, and pilots historically whore out for the $$$. The problem here for Spirit was that the pilots pressed to test and leaned on the achiles heel of the premise. The problem for the pilot group might be if the effect can be proven as a collective effort, aka an organized effort. RLA yanks pilot organized labor from being able to do these types of things above water, which is why the RLA has got to go but that's for another day.
At any rate, I have no visibility on whether or not the effort was organized in a way the company can successfully sue for. Don't get me wrong, nothing about that kind of organized effort is immoral even if it were illegal according to the RLA. Non-airline organized labor has historically had a lot more legal teeth than what airline pilots are afforded, so I'm with them. I just sincerely don't know if they are gonna get smacked down legally. The so-called "no float" campaign at AMERICAN was another scheme that some people believe was instrumental to AA giving the pilots that mid-contract "out of the blue" pay raise, though others feel it was inconsequential to the dynamics that led to said payraise giveaway by the company.
Would something similar occur in Southwest? According to my SW co-workers, survey says no. They have a hand to mouth worker attitude, and they value their ability to throttle their schedules and get paid premium while working de facto regional schedules for less days a month total than a ginger "legacy" schedule for more days a month. Hey, I got no quarrel with that, but that is blue collar hourly worker mentality (the ol' measuring monthly pay in terms of factor of common household item purchases). It's a weird industry, but there you have it. Something for everybody.
