Woke Airline Policies Threaten Safety, Workers Say

Southwest Airlines Co. is basking in accolades for its “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) efforts, award-winning customer service, and record-breaking quarterly revenues.

Behind the scenes of that rosy picture, heartaches are afflicting Southwest, called “the airline with Heart” because of its heart-shaped logo and a corporate culture steeped in “The Golden Rule,” treating others the same way they’d like to be treated.

But eight current Southwest employees, including three minorities, told The Epoch Times that “woke, leftist” DEI policies, as implemented, have tarnished the cherished Golden Rule principle, fractured a once-cohesive workforce, and, ultimately, may put safety at risk.

Faced with pandemic-related staffing shortages and pressure to add minorities, the company has changed the way it hires, trains, and disciplines workers—mostly to benefit less-qualified new hires representing the diversity rainbow, the employees say.

One Southwest flight attendant, a Hispanic female, said: “They are compromising safety for the sake of race, gender identity, and sexual preference … They’re risking people’s lives because of agendas.”

Southwest, one of America’s largest air carriers, didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

Similar issues have spread industry-wide, according to 10 airline employees who agreed to be interviewed. Four are pilots and six are flight attendants; most have 20 or more years of experience. All of them, including two American Airlines pilots, spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their jobs.

While no one thinks the policies are causing an imminent threat of a plane falling out of the sky tomorrow, all of the interviewees agreed that each time a standard is lowered, or a less-qualified employee is hired, the risk that something can go horribly wrong inches forward a notch or two. In an industry that depends on a near-miracle integration of people, machinery, and computers, even a few deviations can culminate in catastrophe.

Still, some employees worry about what could happen if current trends continue to stress out and distract safety professionals. Said one flight attendant: “It’s a recipe for disaster. I just hope I’m not at work when it happens.”

Us-Versus-Them Mentality

While promoting diversity sounds like a great idea, the inclusionary policies have actually become exclusionary at Southwest, employees say. Disparate treatment has divided their ranks into two distinct camps: those with “desirable” or “approved” personal, social, or political characteristics—and those without.

Minorities or people with leftist political views, varying gender identities, and alternative sexual orientations appear to be given wide latitude. This “protected class” is allowed to bend or break rules, and new hires in these classifications may be given extra chances to pass required skills tests, the employees said.

At the same time, veteran workers—especially those who are white, heterosexual, and conservative—find themselves in the crosshairs for almost anything, including making a personal statement of religious or political beliefs, the Southwest workers said. Even minorities can be shifted into this targeted group if they espouse personal beliefs running counter to causes that the company supports.

“There are two sets of standards: One for us and one for them,” said an experienced flight attendant.

One of her colleagues said: “The company is trying to eliminate anybody who does not agree with their agenda. The last few years, anybody who speaks up against them, they want gone.” That flight attendant said she had no problems at work until she posted her Christian religious beliefs on her personal Facebook page, along with her support of President Donald Trump. A coworker reported the posts to Southwest, and the flight attendant said she has faced repercussions ever since.

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The interviewed employees blame DEI policies for sowing the seeds of division. Ironically, before DEI was implemented, “people were never labeled,” a flight attendant said. “I find it very divisive,” she said, “because now everyone is labeled, divided by race, gender sexual orientation … whatever.”

“This is wrong—all the way wrong,” she said.

The company’s annual report, in its DEI section, says, “Southwest Airlines recognizes, respects, and values differences. … At Southwest, DEI is and always has been a part of our DNA.”

All four major airlines—and many other American companies—publicly disclose DEI-related information, such as data on minority recruitment and the racial makeup of their workforce.

“Every airline is trying to push forward with minority hiring because they want to ‘show that they care,’” aviation analyst Jay Ratliff said. “They’re being asked, ‘How many women are within your pilot ranks? … How many pilots of color?’”

If an airline’s diversity metrics seem low in comparison to their competitors’ numbers, the company’s reputation and bottom line can suffer, Ratliff said.

That’s not necessarily fair, he said, because few people have the ability, interest, and financial means to qualify as a commercial airline pilot. Amassing the FAA-required 1,500 hours of flight time with an instructor can cost $75,000 or more, pilots said.

Last year, United Airlines announced its goals: to train 5,000 new pilots by 2030 at its new flight school, with “at least half of those students to be women or people of color.” The first class of new recruits “exceeded that goal,” with 80 percent of the 30 students fitting that category, the airline said in a report.

Considering that white males make up about one-third of the American population, a Southwest pilot said that composing a class with 80 percent minorities and women looks like “DEI special-status hiring on steroids.”

Scoring Systems Push Diversity

DEI data play a significant role in corporate ESG scores—ratings of a company’s “environmental, social, and governance” performance. It’s a complex—and controversial—way to assess which companies are considered “good corporate citizens.”

Most of the interviewed airline employees believe that the pursuit of ESG scores is driving corporate personnel practices, including ignoring well-qualified male applicants while eagerly hiring less-experienced female and minority candidates.

Increasingly, ESG scores can help determine whether a company sinks or swims. A good ESG score can attract investors, government contracts, and favorable loan-interest rates—benefits that are especially important for the airline industry, in which lucrative U.S. Department of Defense contracts are at stake and profit margins are razor-thin because of astronomical costs for equipment and personnel.

ESG ratings have existed in some form for decades, yet they barely registered a blip on internet searches until a few months ago, amid the Biden administration’s continued push for businesses to address environmental concerns and to institute “green” policies, which weigh heavily in ESG scores and DEI metrics.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced his intent to push back against ESG, calling it “leveraging corporate power to impose an ideological agenda on society.”

Refinitiv, a company that produces ESG scores, says its process for calculating the ratings starts with collecting more than 630 ESG measures from each company’s public disclosures. Other ESG assessors have their own rating systems, which means results can vary depending on which assessment method is being used. ESG advocates are now working on standardizing how these scores are calculated.

Several airline employees said it would benefit their company, their industry, and society in general if ESG scores and DEI programs were abolished.

One Southwest pilot with decades of experience said such measures create unnecessary complications with no positive effect on the airline’s core mission.

“Why do we need DEI programs? Why do we need ESG? A lot of the public isn’t even aware these things exist,” he said. “The passengers just want people like me to get them, and their bags, to the same place at the same time, safely … DEI and ESG do nothing to support that—zero.”

“I need these DEI programs and ESG scores to go out the back of the airplane like the jet fuel that we burn.”

Non-Pilots Hiring Pilots

Southwest’s annual report says it has been “evolving hiring and development practices to support diversity goals.”

Those changes are troubling to the interviewed employees and to the pilots’ union. In a letter to members last month, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association pointed out that, for the first time in the company’s 51-year history, a non-pilot is in charge of hiring pilots. The “system chief pilot” used to have that responsibility. “We are just a single step away” from hiring pilots based upon mere reviews of their resumes, association president Casey Murray wrote to union members. Southwest has about 9,600 pilots, the letter said.

Putting a non-pilot in charge of hiring pilots most likely will affect the quality of the pilots who are being hired, Southwest interviewees said. People who lack specific knowledge of this specialized job would have a hard time telling the difference between a good hire and a bad one, pilots said. One of the interviewed pilots said that the chief pilot told him: “The diversity department has a very strong voice in who gets hired.”

Southwest wants to hire more than 2,000 pilots in the next year, the union’s letter said, questioning whether those new hires will be required to meet Southwest’s traditionally high standards. “Across the entire commercial aviation industry, employers are fighting for an ever-shrinking pool of qualified pilots,” yet Southwest may be at a disadvantage to compete for those pilots. Contract negotiations with Southwest’s pilots are lagging, compared to progress with other airlines’ pilot unions, Murray said.

“Pilots are the fuel that powers Southwest Airlines, and right now Southwest’s supply of fuel is running low. Time is growing critical, and options are becoming limited,” Murray wrote.

Seeking the Best (Non-White) Pilots?

Current pilots also say they have learned that hiring decisions are being driven by a job candidate scoring system; they’re unsure how long it has been in place, how it works, or whether it unfairly elevates minorities. The company controls all of that information.

Still, the employees feel confident in anecdotal evidence suggesting that the scoring system, coupled with other hiring practices, could be producing a pattern of discrimination against men, especially white men who come from military backgrounds—previously highly sought-after job candidates. “We could be wrong, but I don’t think we are,” said one pilot who has military experience.

That pilot said he thinks the vast majority of his colleagues have heard accounts of possible discrimination similar to the following:

When a well-qualified former military pilot applied for a job, Southwest never contacted him for an interview. But the applicant learned that a woman was hired as a pilot, despite having half as much experience in the airline industry.

Further, the man had experience as a captain while the woman had only been a first officer, who sits next to the captain in the cockpit. “It’s a completely different world” when a person shifts into the captain’s chair, said the pilot.

“We’re leaving a lot of people behind who are better-qualified, just because they’re the wrong color, or they’re identified the wrong way. That’s concerning. We’re not putting the best up-front,” he said. “We have people’s lives in our hands. It’s just like with doctors. If you go to a doctor, you want to go to the best doctor you can.”

An American Airlines pilot with decades of experience said he was less troubled than some of the Southwest interviewees who worried about the effects of reduced standards as a result of the increased emphasis on diversity hiring. However, that pilot said he would become very concerned if standards are lowered “to the point where people aren’t flying as confidently.”

A second American Airlines pilot said he has observed that “training is not nearly as comprehensive as it used to be,” he said. “But these people who are starting out are flying with people who are supremely qualified to be flying airplanes—so mistakes can be covered.”

He thinks the reduced standards could eventually cause problems if the hyperfocus on diversity continues: “If you’re looking for a diverse workforce and not a qualified workforce, you’ve got issues. … You haven’t seen any accidents because of ‘diversity,’ but the potential is there.”

All 11 people who were interviewed for this story, including Carter, the ex-flight attendant, said personal traits such as gender and race shouldn’t be part of the equation at all.

“From the cockpit door forward, guys and gals of all ethnicities are after the same thing—and that’s a safe flight,” said one of the American Airlines pilots. “They don’t care who sits next to them as long as they can do the job.”

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These programs and the “woke” cultural shift are creating huge distractions, which by themselves pose a threat to safety in ways that most people never think about, the pilot said.

“People take it for granted that takeoffs equal landings. But I can tell you that there are close calls—regularly—where human intervention prevented things from getting really bad. … And the traveling public never knew about it,” the pilot said.

For everyone’s safety, all airline workers must be at the top of their game.

“We need the most qualified people in these safety-sensitive jobs. But it doesn’t stop at the cockpit door,” he said. If any part of the system breaks down because a person was distracted or wasn’t the most qualified person for the job, “the end result is the same if you had an unqualified pilot: the airplane is a smoking hole at the end of the runway and you have 170 people dead—and a lot of angry families.”

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Before each takeoff, pilots mentally rehearse how they would react to rare dreaded scenarios, which have actually happened: A maintenance guy doesn’t do his job and the engine falls off the airplane. Or the motor blows up. Or a fire erupts. There is an infinite number of things that can go wrong. But such incidents are exceedingly rare—and when they do happen, a miraculous interplay between humans and technology averts death and catastrophe.

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Under these circumstances, it’s infinitesimally trivial to even give a moment’s consideration to a person’s race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, or any other trait.

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In one way, the “new” rules don’t really bother the pilot: He said he was already treating people well. That won’t change, he said.  He just hates knowing that at any moment, he could be “written up because I looked at you wrong.”

As a white male, the pilot recognizes he’s “the new minority.”

He says he has to go to work every day and prove “I’m not the hopelessly bigoted, homophobic, misogynist, sexist fossil that they think I am.”

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