Contract talks continue for Air Canada

Toronto Star
Vanessa Lu, Business Reporter

Air Canada’s flight attendants remain undecided about whether they would support a proposed discount carrier that the airline’s pilots have already solidly rejected.

“It’s sort of on hold right now,” said Jeff Taylor, president of the Air Canada component of CUPE. “We’re not saying we’re going to consider it. We’re not saying we’re not going to consider it.

“The company has to be viable at the end of day, or we don’t have jobs,” Taylor told reporters after addressing the CUPE Ontario convention on Thursday.

Air Canada has proposed the creation of a discount airline to Europe or “sun” destinations down south to compete with carriers like Air Transat and Sunwing.

But it needs the support of its unions to go ahead.

Company officials say a new business with a different cost structure would make the airline more competitive in the leisure market, and it could create 462 new pilot jobs by 2015 and at least three times as many flight attendant jobs.

Taylor’s speech emphasized that when Air Canada was on the brink of bankruptcy, the union made concessions on wages, benefits and work rules.

Now that the airline is in the black, and top executives are getting lucrative compensation packages including president and CEO Calin Rovinescu who earned nearly $4.6 million last year, the union says it’s their turn.

Earlier this month, nearly two-thirds of pilots voted down a tentative contract deal, which means the union will head back to the bargaining table with the airline, likely next month.

While the flight attendants and pilots have not begun any countdown to a strike date, customer-service agents, who are represented by the Canadian Auto Workers, are in a legal strike position at 11:59 p.m. on June 13.

It is unclear whether a CAW walkout could ground the airline, if other union groups including pilots and machinists would refuse to cross picket lines.

“We do have the right to refuse to cross picket lines,” Taylor said, but added the company can provide alternate access. “As unions, we have the solidarity between all of our groups. Common fronts are not uncommon.”

Air Canada has said it is business as usual for the airline and customers can continue to book Air Canada flights with confidence.

“In the event of a strike, Air Canada will maintain a full operation and implement a contingency service plan at airports and call centres to minimize impact on customers,” the airline said in a statement last week.

CUPE has only just begun its negotiations with the company, and the mood is good, but Taylor said it is early on.

However, his union is standing firm on pensions. The company wants to switch from a defined benefit program, which has a guaranteed payout, to a defined contribution program for new hires.

Taylor said it would “unconscionable” not to protect new employees, but added the airline’s four main unions are working together to come up with an alternative to the defined contribution plan.

“Originally, it was not supposed to come to the bargaining table, but it did surface,” he said, adding the union has a pension agreement until 2014.

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