Air Canada on Strike!

It was inevitable, CAW members have walked off the job and the airline strike begins. As of 11:59pm, just before midnight, Air Canada’s approximately 4,000 call-centre staff and check-in agents started their strike action against Air Canada as last minute negotiations failed to achieve an agreement. As of now, the pickets are up and the wait time is anybody’s guess at nine Canadian airports: Vancouver; Calgary; Edmonton; Winnipeg; Toronto (Pearson); Montreal; Ottawa, Halifax; and St. John’s. The company has said all along it will be business as usual but thousands of employees not showing up for work is not going to be without some effect.

The recommendation by Canada’s largest carrier is to get checked in early and the earlier the better and people should do this online. Be prepared to wait and if at all possible, avoid travelling with checked baggage. While the company says it has a contingency plan, there is the question of how it will cope when 4,000 call centre and customer service agents at nine airports in Canada walk off the job. According to a letter on Air Canada’s web site, the company indicates that they have non-unionized staff trained and available to ensure a continued operation.

Don’t forget to check Air Canada’ s FAQ for further information. As well, the Air Canada web site will have strike related announcements. To repeat: start early and be prepared to wait. Do as much as possible online beforehand. Get booked in online 24 hours in advance. Print your boarding pass at an automated kiosk at the airport. Do it yourself if you can; avoid having to line up at a counter. And, as the airline said, if you can avoid flying with checked baggage, do it. That is one less line-up to go through.

For those not yet booked on Air Canada, the newspapers are reporting that WestJet and Porter have seats available so this could be a good time to try out the competition. From experience, I can say that anybody living in Toronto close to the downtown core, Porter Airlines flying out of the Toronto Island Airport is a dream.

This morning’s papers are reiterating what was written about the last minute negotiations and the big stumbling block between the two sides: pensions. Air Canada wants to move new hires from define benefit pension plans to defined contribution pension plans. This obviously represents a hit for the individual worker but for the system, it is inevitable that funding is a growing problem and could eventually see a financial catastrophe. With more people retiring and people just living longer, pension programs are having more difficulty in supporting a larger and larger group of retirees. The federal government is facing the same problem with CPP.

See this previous article for further information on pensions, the positions of the two sides, and what you need to go to ease the burden of travelling.

Air Canada workers to strike on Monday at midnight – Jun 12/2011

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