A whole lot of Air Canada pilots held informational pickets on the firm’s main airport hubs in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver on Tuesday afternoon to spotlight their contract calls for and the looming menace of a potential all-out strike as early as September 17. The demonstrations adopted on from final week’s announcement of an amazing 98 % strike vote by the pilots at Canada’s largest air service.
Members of the Air Canada Pilots Affiliation, the 5,400 staff have been working below an expired collective settlement since June 2023. That contract was an inferior 9-year deal negotiated in 2014. It got here on the heels of the Conservative authorities of Prime Minister Stephen Harper utilizing an anti-strike regulation to illegalize impending strikes by Air Canada pilots, mechanics and different floor crew in 2012, and sanctioning harsh penalties for pilots who participated in an unsanctioned April 2012 “sickout” that the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) deemed a “wildcat strike.”
Air Canada pilots haven’t carried out an official, union-sanctioned strike since a two-week work stoppage in 1998.
On account of the extraordinarily prolonged, outdated and unsatisfactory settlement adopted in 2014, pilots at Air Canada at present earn about half the compensation of air crews on the 4 largest US-based airways. Additionally they have considerably much less beneficial pension plans and work scheduling preparations.
Based on Charlene Hudy, chair of the Air Canada ALPA Grasp Government Council, the objective is to not strike, however moderately to “modernize” the pilots’ contract with Canada’s principal air service. Union officers have been bargaining for “truthful compensation, respectable retirement advantages, and quality-of-life enhancements” for greater than a yr. However Air Canada administration continues to name for extra “cheap” pay calls for, nonetheless citing the bottom-line impacts from the a number of years of pandemic-induced passenger decline that started the last decade.
Employees, nonetheless, wouldn’t have such quick reminiscences that they’ve forgotten the large bailouts handed over to the corporate by the Trudeau Liberal authorities. Of all publicly traded corporations within the nation, Air Canada obtained the only largest quantity of federal funding—a staggering C$492 million of public funds by the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), which coated as much as 75 % of staff’ wages. Because the WSWS beforehand defined, the wage subsidy functioned as little greater than a slush fund for the company elite, with corporations persevering with to bathe their stockholders with fats payouts whereas claiming the general public funds.
Union officers have soft-pedalled the strike vote, expressing their hopes that Air Canada administration will meet the pilots’ calls for and keep away from strike motion. These similar spokespeople stay silent on the very actual chance that the federal Liberal authorities will intervene to override the collective bargaining rights of the pilots and power them right into a pro-employer binding arbitration course of, which might as soon as once more be used to impose the lion’s share of administration’s calls for.
For months, pilots have been hamstrung by the interminable obstacles inherent within the federal collective bargaining course of. After the expiration of the earlier contract and a subsequent impasse in negotiations, pilot affiliation officers entered right into a prolonged bargaining course of with a federally appointed conciliator. With that required course of wrapping up on August 26, the employees now should bear a 21 day “cooling off” interval earlier than any authorized strike motion can start.
In fact, pilots at Air Canada are conscious of the continued strikes by each federal and provincial governments throughout the nation to steadily strip staff in key sectors of business and public service of their proper to strike. They’ve seen threats of and/or precise back-to-work legal guidelines utilized by governments in live performance with employers at St. Lawrence Seaway and British Columbia ports, the nationwide railways, Canada Put up, and within the airline business itself.
The precise to strike has been below systematic assault in Canada for many years. On dozens of events, federal and provincial governments of all political stripes, together with the New Democratic Occasion (NDP), have imposed back-to-work laws and criminalized employee job actions. However with the deepening disaster of worldwide capitalism driving the ruling class to accentuate austerity and worker-exploitation at house, while waging conflict internationally, any disruption to logistics, infrastructure or business is now forbidden.
Solely final month, 680 putting mechanics at WestJet, the nation’s second largest airline, have been pressured into an inferior contract after a short strike was scuttled by federal intervention. With negotiations stalled after the mid-June rejection of a proposed contract by an amazing majority of the mechanics, the then federal Liberal Labor Minister, Seamus O’Regan, tried to stop a looming strike by ordering WestJet administration and the union into binding arbitration.
With reviews that each administration and the union had agreed to such arbitration, staff nonetheless went forward with their deliberate strike, arguing that O’Regan’s unique order did not impose any legally sanctioned requirement outlawing strike exercise. WestJet administration responded by viciously smearing the strikers for holding passengers “hostage” and referred to as on O’Regan to urgently make clear his intentions. The labor minister then hastened to sign that he would instruct the CIRB to problem a ruling illegalizing the mechanics’ strike if the union and administration did not carry the dispute to a fast decision. Shortly thereafter, union officers ended the job motion and ensured the ratification of an organization pleasant contract.
The brewing dispute at Air Canada happens simply days after the Liberal authorities of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau imposed binding arbitration on over 9,300 railway staff employed at Canadian Nationwide (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas Metropolis (CPKC) railways, blocking strike motion.
The earlier, avowedly right-wing federal Conservative authorities employed anti-strike laws as a direct reflex motion to finish main strike threats throughout the financial system. The union-supported Liberal authorities, nonetheless propped up by the double-talking NDP, claims to be “pro-worker” however operates from the identical playbook.
Driving roughshod over repeated court docket rulings ostensibly upholding staff’ constitutional rights to free collective bargaining, the capitalist ruling elite makes use of Part 107 of the Canada Labour Code as its “trump card.” This part, which the Liberal authorities has now used thrice to short-circuit staff’ struggles within the final yr, empowers the Labour Minister to order the unelected Canada Industrial Relations Board to “do things like to the Minister appear prone to preserve or safe industrial peace and to advertise circumstances beneficial to the settlement of industrial disputes.” In different phrases, quasi-dictatorial powers are activated to ensure the income of the companies over the rights of the working class at any time when wanted.
Whether or not or not it’s the looming chance of a strike at Air Canada or another contract battle that staff enter into, laborious political classes should be drawn as governments and firms transfer to extinguish the fundamental democratic rights of the working class while the so-called representatives of staff within the union bureaucracies refuse to elevate a finger to mount a political battle to defend the working class in opposition to the predations of austerity and conflict.
If staff are to develop a counter-offensive in opposition to the ever-expanding employer-state assault on their jobs, working circumstances and rights, they have to construct new organizations of sophistication battle and undertake a brand new political technique based mostly on the worldwide unity of the working class and refusal to subordinate staff’ must the imperatives of capitalist revenue.