> I saw one explanation (no idea if it's true) that individuals were taking sick days

Good news! If you actually read the article, you get information like:

“Nothing like that is true,” Jordan said. “We didn’t see sick leave beyond normal. In fact, we saw our crews picking up open time to the extent that they could.”

RTFA: it’s better than random Twitter speculation. I mean, yeah, it’s about Southwest and not American, but it’s hard to see why pilot behavior would be different.

That doesn't seem to exactly contradict Covzire. Covzire was talking about vacation, while the quote is mostly talking about sick leave.

They're saying they took sick days instead of vacations.

That's entirely about sick leave.

I think I misunderstood, but my main idea might still stand. Some companies treat vacation and sick days as the same thing, and put them in the same bucket called PTO. Some companies separate them. I'm not sure what Southwest does. If Southwest separates them, then labster's quote could be true while simultaneously a lot of employees are out on vacation days due to wanting to use them up before quitting.

Covzire was claiming without any proof whatsoever that they saw "lots of reports on twitter."

Some have also claimed that PTO's are the precursor to likely (mass) resignations too.

Who? You need to include sources when making fantastic and difficult to independently verify claims. Otherwise you’re just spamming propaganda.

It doesn't matter. What mattered is it sparked my curiosity in knowing more, above and below my immediate reply as well as the rest of the comments in this post, however true or false they are. Everyone goes somewhere and I (try to) go where they've been with some DYOR.

Some things I never knew until recently:

- PTO isn't federally and legally required yet most companies do it

- Some states have some influence on PTO policy

- Southwest Airlines is a Texas-headquartered company

- Because of claims that MSM are either incompetent or narrative-driven, secondary and tertiary conjectures leading to this headline should be considered as well

- Lastly, a visit to Wikipedia yielded this line:

> If PTO hours go unused, employees may sometimes call in sick near the end of the year so they can obtain the benefit of paid leave before it disappears. Employers may counter this tendency by paying employees for some or all of their unused days at year-end or upon retirement or resignation.[1]

PTO is a form of compensation. Every place I’ve worked at has paid me for unused, accrued PTO when I left. But I’ve also never been terminated, so don’t know if that matters.

I've worked in places that do pay unused PTO and places that don't - all in the same state. My experience is paying it out is less common.

Unused PTO must be paid out in many states and in states where it is not legally required it is generally still required if the business has historically done it. Beyond that, Southwest pilots are unionized. No sizable union would allow separation without PTO payout.

Unions are for people in the Union, aka the people still working there, not for those getting fired with cause (failure to get vaccinated). This sounds exactly like something a union wouldn't care about.

What are your credentials for telling us things that unions do and don’t care about? What unions are you in? What direct experience do you have with how unions decide what’s important to them?

This is definitely not true.

Unions absolutely negotiate separation terms, etc.

Some states require this, some don't.