Last year, the Oakland City Attorney sued Southwest Airlines for allegedly depriving some of its thousands of workers of paid sick leave. Last week, without explanation, the Oakland City Council quietly killed the lawsuit during a closed-session meeting.
A memo from the closed-session meeting outlined the case history but offered no reason for why councilmembers directed the City Attorney to dismiss the case against the Oakland airport’s biggest carrier without settlement.
Councilmembers Ken Houston, Kevin Jenkins, Noel Gallo, Janani Ramachandran, and Charlene Wang voted in favor of ending the litigation. Councilmember Zac Unger voted against it. Councilmembers Carroll Fife and Rowena Brown were absent and didn’t vote.
On Wednesday, the city filed a request in Alameda County Superior Court to dismiss the case without prejudice.
In a statement to The Oaklandside, City Attorney Ryan Richardson said, “While this certainly isn’t the outcome our office anticipated when the Council approved this lawsuit last year, we fully respect the Council’s authority under the City Charter to direct us to dismiss it.”
“As far as the reasons any Councilmember voted the way they did, it’s not my place to speak on their behalf,” Richardson said. “What I can say is that I’m deeply grateful to the workers who came forward with concerns about sick-leave compliance, to the dedicated staff at Oakland’s Department of Workplace and Employment Standards for their thorough investigation, and to the attorneys in our office who committed months of hard work to this case.”
Oakland is one of many big cities that has its own labor laws employers must follow, including rules around the minimum wage and sick leave. Oakland voters approved the sick leave rules in 2014.
The Oaklandside reached out multiple times to each councilmember seeking an interview about this decision. Houston said he made the motion to dismiss the lawsuit because “this has been going on too long.”
“Enough is enough, I’m done, I’m tired,” said Houston, who added that he’s been asking the city to drop this lawsuit since he took office in January, noting that the underlying case has been going on for seven years and the worker complaints are only “allegations.”
Houston said he was also concerned about Southwest rerouting flights away from Oakland, although he added that this wasn’t the reason he pushed to end the litigation.
Houston said he plans to chat with Southwest representatives in the next couple of weeks to “break bread with them.” The council’s decision, he said, lets other companies in Oakland know that the city’s new leadership “wants to make partnerships” with businesses.
“If you do what’s right, it’s gonna be okay, and if you don’t, we’ll put down the hammer,” Houston. “You have new leadership that’s gonna stand up for the people.”
Wang told The Oaklandside she voted to dismiss the suit partly because it’s been going on for years, but also because “unfortunately, our Southwest inbound traffic has taken a really significant hit.”
“For me, it wasn’t about the merits of the suit,” Wang said. “This wasn’t an easy vote for me. But I also wanted to hear out my colleagues who had the most at stake given the jobs and the economic activity in their districts.”
Wang said she supports some of the affirmative litigation the City Attorney has done, but stressed that it’s important for the city to focus on cases where there’s direct benefits to the city, given Oakland’s limited financial and staffing resources. She also said the possibility of Southwest leaving the city came up during the council’s discussion, which was something else that Oakland’s leaders have to consider.
“Obviously they’re a flawed employer,” Wang said. “But is it better to have a flawed employer no employer?”
Jenkins, through his chief of staff, told The Oaklandside he had no comment to make about his vote. None of the other councilmembers responded to our questions.
Houston added that he spoke with representatives from the Port, whom he didn’t identify. “They were happy that it was solved, and they were very concerned on how long it’s been going on,” Houston said.
We reached out to Port Commissioners, but none responded to our interview requests. Airport spokesperson Kaley Skantz said the Port was not party to the city’s lawsuit or any actions taken during the council’s closed session deliberations.
According to one former City Hall insider, some Oakland officials had previously considered trying to settle the lawsuit by having Southwest agree to make economic development commitments to Oakland, including investments in the airport modernization project. It’s unclear if that proposal was ever brought forward. The insider, who asked not to be named, also claimed that Southwest repeatedly contacted Oakland officials about the lawsuit.
A Southwest spokesperson declined to answer questions, citing ongoing litigation.
The company previously said that assertions about Oakland employees being forced to work while sick or take unpaid absences were unfounded. The company promised it would vigorously defend itself against “these frivolous claims” in court.
Oakland fought Southwest for years over alleged labor law violations
The city initiated its lawsuit against Southwest in September 2024, accusing the airline of violating multiple local laws, including the city’s Minimum Wage and Sick Leave Ordinance, as well as state labor law. The complaint accused Southwest of denying some of its 3,000 workers in Oakland the right to use earned paid sick leave and retaliating against workers who tried to use their time-off benefits.
In a 2024 FAQ, then-City Attorney Barbara Parker explained that Oakland started receiving complaints from Oakland employees about Southwest in 2017. According to the FAQ, Southwest had a policy of zeroing out unused sick leave its employees had accumulated each year, and failed to ensure employees were accruing paid sick leave at the rate prescribed by city law. The city came to a settlement with Southwest in 2020, but Oakland subsequently received more complaints from employees about new and different violations.
Among its demands, the city wanted Southwest to become fully compliant with Oakland and California paid sick leave laws; offer restitution, damages, and penalties to affected employees; and pay enforcement costs and penalties to the city.
A spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office told The Oaklandside that as far as they are aware, Southwest’s alleged violations of the 2020 settlement have not been remedied.
The City Attorney was actively pursuing the litigation as recently as two weeks ago, when it filed a motion in Alameda County Superior Court to compel Southwest to turn over records as part of discovery. According to that motion, Southwest has produced a total of two documents in addition to a limited set of documents it had previously shared with the city in its 2020 settlement. The city was also seeking financial sanctions against Southwest for impeding Oakland from being able to resolve the litigation.
Southwest is also embroiled in litigation with the union that represents many of its workers, Transport Workers Union Local 555. Earlier this year, the airline accused the union of violating the federal Railway Labor Act, a statute that governs labor agreements between unions and “common carriers by air,” which includes Southwest.
In the lawsuit with Oakland, Southwest filed what’s called a cross-complaint, basically a counter-lawsuit that’s part of the same case. In the cross-complaint, Southwest alleged that the Transport Workers Union Local 555 failed to maintain its collective bargaining agreement with the company by encouraging the city to investigate worker complaints. The airline also accused the union of providing the City Attorney with incorrect or misleading information, and noted that the union’s then president, Abilio Villaverde, provided a quote for the City Attorney to use in the press release announcing the lawsuit.
The union filed a motion to strike Southwest’s cross-complaint. Tony Slavings, president for Transport Workers Union Local 555, declined to comment on the case. An attorney representing the union also did not respond to an inquiry.
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