A strike by WestJet plane mechanics forced the airline to cancel hundreds more flights on Sunday, upending the plans of about 110,000 travelers over the Canada Day long weekend and prompting the carrier to demand federal government measures.
The approximately 680 workers, whose daily inspections and repairs are essential to the airline’s operations, walked off the job Friday evening despite a binding arbitration directive from the federal labor minister.
WestJet President Diederik Pen wrote in a statement Sunday that the company “has received a binding arbitration order and is awaiting urgent clarification from the government that a strike and arbitration cannot exist simultaneously.”
He also insisted that “this is a problem they are committed to addressing and, like all Canadians,” they are waiting.
Since Thursday, WestJet has cancelled 829 flights scheduled between then and Monday – the busiest travel weekend of the season, the carrier said.
The vast majority of Sunday’s flights were canceled as WestJet reduced its fleet of 180 planes to 32 active aircraft and topped the global list of cancellations among major airlines over the weekend.
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Trevor Temple-Murray was among thousands of customers scrambling to rebook after their trips were cancelled less than a day before departure.
“We’ll just have to wait,” said the Lethbridge, Alta., resident, who was waiting in the Victoria airport parking lot to try to board a plane to Calgary with his wife and two-year-old son, all two beside him in the car.
PHOTO CHRISTOPHER KATSAROV, THE CANADIAN PRESS
An employee speaks with passengers in the WestJet check-in area at Pearson International Airport in Toronto on June 29.
Their flight, scheduled for 6:05 p.m., was canceled and they won’t know until the evening whether a flight scheduled for 7 a.m. the next day will take place.
“There are a lot of angry people out there,” Temple-Murray said, pointing to the airport.
Other travelers took to social media to express their frustration – sometimes in colorful language.
One customer claimed the airline only informed him at 11:12 p.m. Saturday that their next day’s flight from Las Vegas had been canceled, calling the last-minute decision “bastard behavior.”
Accusations on both sides
WestJet and the Airplane Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) have accused the other side of refusing to negotiate in good faith.
WestJet Airlines President Diederik Pen criticized what he called “continued reckless actions” by the union, which he said is making “blatant efforts” to disrupt Canadians’ travel plans, while the union maintains that the The Calgary-based company declined to respond to its latest counterproposal.
On Sunday, the union said its members were “victims of WestJet’s vicious public relations campaign that [ils sont] offenders,” citing “slander” against workers regarding their right to strike.
The pressure tactics come after union members voted overwhelmingly to reject a tentative deal with WestJet in mid-June and after two weeks of tense negotiations between the two sides.
As Friday’s strike deadline approached, the impasse prompted Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan to step in, demanding the airline and union enter into binding arbitration run by the country’s labour court.
This process usually avoids a work stoppage. WestJet certainly thought so, saying the union had “confirmed that it would comply with the instructions.”
“Under these conditions, no strikes or lockouts will take place and the airline will no longer proceed with the cancellation of flights,” the airline said on Thursday.
AMFA took a different view. The union negotiating committee said it would “comply with the minister’s order and ask its members to refrain from any illegal actions.” Less than 24 hours later, workers were on the picket lines.
A decision by the Canada Industrial Relations Board appears to confirm the legality of their actions, regardless of the protocols surrounding arbitration, a process that generally avoids work stoppages rather than triggering them.
“The council considers that the ministerial referral does not have the effect of suspending the right to strike or lockout,” the court wrote on Friday.
Mr O’Regan said the next day that the board’s decision was “clearly inconsistent” with the instructions he had given, but later added that he respected the body’s independence. He met with both parties on Saturday evening.
“I told them they needed to work together with the Canada Industrial Relations Board to resolve their differences and reach their first agreement,” he wrote in a social media post.
Mr. O’Regan has broad powers under the Canada Labour Code. While his initial direction to the binding arbitration tribunal may have assumed that a strike was precluded by precedent, the labour minister could take a range of measures to “ensure industrial peace and promote conditions favourable to the settlement of labour disputes,” the legislation states.
“For these purposes, the Minister may […] order the council to take the measures it deems necessary. »
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said in a social media post Sunday that the federal government “can do the right thing by intervening to end the work stoppage today.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith had a similar message.
The two sides were due to meet on Sunday, the union said.
“Unknown territory”
“This is uncharted territory. We’re breaking a new precedent here,” Ian Evershed, a mechanic and union representative involved in the negotiations, said in a telephone interview Sunday.
The union’s goal remains a deal reached through negotiation rather than arbitration – a path it has opposed from the start.
“This process could take months,” he said, stressing that a strike puts pressure on the employer. This position is at odds with WestJet’s statement that the pressure tactics amounted to “pure retaliation” given that an agreement would be settled through arbitration anyway.
“It was our only decision,” Evershed said, adding that a negotiated settlement could still be reached.
In a brief submitted to the court last week, WestJet lawyers said the union sought “an unreasonable and extortionate result” and intentionally maneuvered to place the strike date at the height of summer travel.
The union says its wage demands would cost WestJet less than $8 million more than what the company offered in the first year of the collective agreement — the first contract between the two sides. It acknowledged the wages would be higher than industry peers across Canada and more comparable to their U.S. counterparts.
WestJet says it has offered a 12.5 per cent wage increase in the first year of the contract, plus a compound wage increase of 23 per cent over the remainder of the five-and-a-half years.
Meanwhile, the weekend’s turbulence has made some people happy.
“We are seeing a huge increase in bookings, likely due to passengers scrambling to salvage their long weekend,” reported Kim Bowie, spokesperson for Flair Airlines, a low-cost airline based in Edmonton.