By Lisa Gordon | October 2, 2023 Estimated reading time 7 minutes, 38 seconds.
A lot has changed in the airline world since Air Canada’s pilots ratified their last collective agreement in the fall of 2014.
That 10-year deal was set to expire in 2024, but Air Canada pilots decided in June to trigger a clause that allows them to exit the contract a year early. Now, it’s back to the bargaining table for the country’s largest airline and its approximately 4,500 pilots.
With contract talks ongoing, Air Canada pilots — represented by the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA) — held an informational picket at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on Sept. 29.
“With the changes that have happened in the world, and in aviation in the last 10 years, our current contract is stale and not reflective of today’s world,” said First Officer Charlene Hudy, Air Canada Master Executive Council (MEC), ALPA International.
She said talks will centre on important issues such as career progression, job security and aviation safety. But the biggest elephant in the bargaining room is the growing wage gap between pilots in the United States and Canada.
“Air Canada pilots have fallen behind their U.S. counterparts with every passing year, with respect to wages,” Hudy told Skies.
“We have seen an increase in pilots leaving Canada for the U.S., or leaving the industry all together, and this number will continue to grow if the wage gap doesn’t change.”
For its part, Air Canada announced in late August that it would be cutting a number of routes from Calgary International Airport in October – including non-stop service to Ottawa, Halifax, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Cancun, and Frankfurt. The country’s largest air carrier blamed the current pilot shortage for impacting its “overall operational stability.”
But ALPA Canada president Capt Tim Perry said that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
At the Pearson picket, he told Skies: “We’ve noticed Air Canada withdrawing and retracting from certain markets in the country. They themselves characterize it as a pilot shortage, which I think is a gross over-simplification of the issue.
“We have a pilot attraction and retention issue here,” he continued. “The wage gap is impossible to ignore at this point. It is large and growing. We have pilots in the United States earning sometimes double what Canadian pilots earn for the same work, and so that is unacceptable and that’s being addressed in this round of negotiations.”
Air Canada pilots are coming to the table against a backdrop of some landmark recent labour agreements.
In March, Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines agreed to give its 15,000 pilots a 34 per cent pay increase over the life of their new contract, which carries through to the end of 2026, as well as other improvements and benefits.
In early June, WestJet pilots ratified a deal that offers them “industry-leading pay increases, strong job-security protections and major scheduling and quality-of-life improvements,” through to Dec. 31, 2026. Earlier, it had been reported that the agreement-in-principle provided WestJet pilots with a 24 per cent pay raise over four years, among other benefits.
On June 13, ALPA officially notified Air Canada of its intention to terminate the existing labour agreement on Sept. 29, 2023. As negotiations proceed, Air Canada said it will be business as usual under the provisions of the prior contract. The airline said it is committed to “reaching a fair, negotiated settlement with our pilot group” although the bargaining process can take several months to conclude.
“We are aiming for the world-class contract that our pilots deserve in a timely manner,” wrote ALPA’s Hudy. “Air Canada pilots fly the same aircraft as major U.S. carriers, on the same routes, carrying the same passengers. They deserve to be compensated equally.”
On May 1, Air Canada pilots voted to merge their previous bargaining unit, the Air Canada Pilots Association, with ALPA, the world’s largest airline pilot union.
With files from Kevin Prentice
