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02-07-2024
TORONTO: Canada’s WestJet has cancelled more than 800 flights after mechanics walked off the job, upending the travel plans of thousands of people over the Canada Day long weekend.
Some 680 workers have been on strike since Friday after the Calgary-based airline and the Airplane Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) failed to reach a deal on salaries and working conditions.
WestJet President and CEO Diederik Pen on Sunday apologized to travelers over the “unnecessary work stoppage”.
“I am encouraged by our employees’ willingness to rise above the adversity and deliver a safe and controlled operation going forward,” Pen said in a statement.
“We continue to hold our view that the current strike serves no purpose other than to inflict maximum damage to our airline and the country.”
WesJet has cancelled 832 flights since Thursday, more than half of them scheduled for Sunday.
The airline said its 180-plane fleet had been reduced to 32 active aircraft as of Sunday.
WestJet and the AMFA have each accused the other side of not negotiating in good faith.
The AMFA has argued its sought-after wage increase would cost WestJet less than 8 million Canadian dollars ($5.8m) beyond what the company has offered for the first year of their contract.
WestJet has said it offered a 12.5 percent wage rise in the first year of the contract, and a compounded wage increase of 23.5 percent over the rest of the five-and-a-half-year term.
The stoppage, which has disrupted the plans of some 110,000 travelers, went ahead despite a directive from Canadian Minister of Labour Seamus O’Regan on Thursday calling for a binding arbitration to settle the dispute.
In June, union members voted 97.25 percent to reject a tentative pay deal reached with WestJet.
McVeigh said the union regrets any inconvenience caused to passengers.
“However, the reason they (passengers) have possibly missed a flight or had to cancel is due to the reason that WestJet is not respectfully sitting down at the table and negotiating,” he said alongside roughly 20 others on the picket line.
“We take on a lot of responsibility and we would just like to be appreciated financially,” he said.
He added the union had rejected a contract offer that would have made the airline’s mechanics the “best-paid in the country.”
In an update to its membership, the union negotiating committee referenced an order by the Canada Industrial Relations Board that does not explicitly bar any strikes or lockouts as the tribunal undertakes arbitration.
Sean McVeigh, a WestJet aircraft maintenance engineer picketing Saturday at Toronto Pearson International Airport Terminal 3, said the strike is an attempt to force the airline to return to a “respectful negotiation.”
At Pearson, WestJet passengers Samin Sahan and Samee Jan said they had been planning to leave Saturday with extended family members on a trip to Calgary that had been planned for six to eight months.
Sahan said they had received emails earlier in the day telling them their flight had been rescheduled for Monday, but they went to the terminal anyway. He said their efforts to seek clarification combined with the strike had left their travel plans up in the air. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
