WestJet flight cancellations grew to over 800 Sunday afternoon, upending plans for close to 100,000 passengers as an unexpected strike by plane mechanics entered its third day on the busiest travel weekend of the season.
There were 424 flights cancelled Sunday, with 78 more scheduled for Canada Day and three more cancellations scheduled for Tuesday.
Some 680 workers, whose daily inspections and repairs are essential to airline operations, walked off the job on Friday evening despite a directive for binding arbitration from the federal government.
As of Sunday morning, 77 per cent of the day’s trips had been called off, with WestJet topping the global list for cancellations among major airlines Saturday and Sunday.
Both parties were set to meet Sunday, the union said
“It’s uncharted territory. We’re breaking a new precedent here,” Ian Evershed, a mechanic and union representative involved in the talks, said in a phone interview Sunday.
The union’s goal remains a deal hammered out through bargaining rather than arbitration — a route it opposed from the get-go.
“That process could take months to go through,” he said, stressing a strike puts pressure on the employer. That stance clashes with WestJet’s statement that the job action boiled down to “pure retaliation” given that a deal would be settled via arbitration regardless.
“It was our only move,” Evershed said, adding a negotiated deal may yet emerge.
In a submission to the tribunal last week, WestJet lawyers said the union sought “an unreasonable and extortionate outcome” and intentionally manoeuvred to place the strike date at the height of summer travel.
The union says its demands around wages would cost WestJet less than $8 million beyond what the company has offered for the first year of the collective agreement — the first contract between the two sides. It has acknowledged the gains would surpass compensation for industry colleagues across Canada and sit more on par with U.S. counterparts.
WestJet says it has offered a 12.5 per cent wage hike in the first year of the contract, and a compounded wage increase of 23 per cent over the rest of the five-and-a-half-year term.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 30, 2024.
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