Uncertainty persists at Airbus Canada in Mirabel: the 1,300 union members who assemble the A220 rejected the agreement in principle concluded by their union with the employer and which provided for salary increases of 22% over five years.
Gathered in assembly on Sunday in Laval, workers represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) rejected the agreement by 68%. The turn of events seems to have surprised the union.
“With this agreement in principle, we believed we had met the members’ expectations, but this is not the case,” said union spokesperson Éric Rancourt. We will quickly contact the employer to discuss the next steps. »
As of midday Sunday, Airbus had not yet commented on the result of the vote. The union members had almost unanimously rejected the first two employer offers presented since mid-March.
Industrial peace was one of the issues to be resolved at Airbus as part of its strategy to make the program profitable. In order to achieve this, the European aircraft manufacturer must double the current production rate within two years and be able to deliver 14 examples of the A220 per month. In 2023, 68 devices had been handed over to customers. After the first three months of the year, deliveries of the A220 stood at 12. The multinational still has a lot of work to do.
Any delay in the profitability schedule risks having consequences for Quebec taxpayers, who hold 25% of this program developed by Bombardier after having injected 1.7 billion since 2015. By agreeing to remit 380 million in 2022, Quebec had been able to push back to 2030 the moment when Airbus can buy back its stake in the A220.
The longer profits wait, the more money the Quebec state will leave on the table.