tcook052

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/west...back-1.3785473

After unsuccessful drives in 2015, pilots and flight attendants at WestJet are working again to form unions at the fast-growing airline. There's one key difference this time around, though.

Last year, they were racing against the calendar as labour laws changed in June 2015 to make certification more difficult. Now the opposite is true.

The Liberal government is getting close to repealing the law that changed the way unions are formed in federally regulated industries. Soon, it will most likely be easier to form a union in Canada.

Easier, but not exactly easy.

Symmetre

For the life of my I can't understand why anyone in their right mind would want to be part of a union in today's world. Why pay a hefty fee off each paycheque for the privilege of pigeon-holing yourself and being tied to the lowest common denominator?

Sopwith

+1. In the company I ran for many years we had a small union contingent of about 7 out of over 200 employees. They finally dumped the union when they figured out that over the last ten years the non-union employees received increases of a few tenths more than the union got, due mainly to the union's adversarial approach to bargaining. And the non-union people payed no dues.

And the union makes us strong?

mahasamatman

Unions are great at protecting the incompetent. Get enough seniority and you can't be fired.

Ocn Vw 1K

In order to keep the thread open in this, the WestJet forum, can we please steer it a bit up from being a meta discussion on unions, generally, and the direction of the Canadian government?

FlyerTalk's OMNI and OMNI/PR forums await those who do wish to discuss the above topics. Thanks, Ocn Vw 1K, Senior Moderator.

james dean

I cannot comment on the FA's but from a few pilots I know at WJA the feeling this next attempt will most likely be successful in forming a Union (WPPA: West Jet Professional Pilots Association)

Error 601

A couple pilots and flight attendants have told me that they think it's inevitable but Greg Saretsky leaving would probably hit the reset switch for at least a little while.

cur

ups and wn employees would strongly beg to differ. and customers seem happy to avail themselves of those companies and shareholders are happy to invest.

fedex employees would agree. and customers seem happy to avail themselves of this company and ditto on shareholders.

ws corporate culture has changed a lot over the years, much like any startup that matures. plus the whole profit sharing to pad low salaries isn't working out and doesn't seem to be sustainable long term. but that was sorta for a reason, ws didn't want lifer ramp or customer service or call center agents. pilots do not seem too happy with their work rules and pay scale. like any skilled trade i sympathize with the workers, to a point.

wasn't Saretsky an as executive at the time as' terminated and outsourced all their ramp ops?

i think they learned from last time, not to mention the nw mechanics case study, that it would be best to go with alpa. but mind you ws isn't as ruthless as nw was.