WestJet says it has cancelled at least 150 flights starting Saturday after the airline’s aircraft maintenance union announced it had gone on strike hours earlier.
The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) announced that its members began striking around 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday because the airline’s “unwillingness to negotiate with the union made the strike inevitable “.
The move comes as the federal government on Thursday ordered binding arbitration to resolve the dispute between the airline and its mechanics.
For two weeks, difficult discussions have been held with the union with a view to a new collective agreement.
Calgary-based WestJet officials on Friday slammed the mechanics’ union’s decision, saying they were “extremely outraged by these actions” and will hold AMFA “fully accountable for the unnecessary stress and costs that have resulted.”
Early Saturday, WestJet President Diederik Pen said in a statement that the strike “serves no one” and that “the scale of this deliberate disruption is devastating.”
On Thursday, WestJet said AMFA was complying with the arbitration order and that as a result, “there will be no strike or lockout and the airline will no longer cancel flights.”
The change of position that took place on Friday seemed to shock travelers and executives alike.
“Is my Sunday flight in jeopardy?” Andrew Wheatley of Edmonton asked in a post on social media site X. “I support a union’s right to strike if it’s legal. And I hope they get a good deal. But at the same time, I have to be at work Monday morning,” he added.
In an update to its members, the union negotiating committee referred to an order from the Canada Industrial Relations Board that does not explicitly prohibit strikes or lockouts while the court undertakes arbitration following the directive from Labor Minister Seamus O’Regan on Wednesday.
This isn’t the first time WestJet has been on the brink of a strike. Last year, the airline avoided a strike in the early hours of the May long weekend, but it led to the cancellation of more than 230 flights and forced thousands of people to change their travel plans.