Labour and employment lawyer delurking to comment. I might be misunderstanding these comments, but I think there may be confusion about why the union has been emphasizing the fact that the current agreement is ten years old. No direct knowledge of what is happening with the AC negotiations, but wanted to provide some context regarding collective bargaining.

When a group of employees is first certified, the employer and union typically negotiate a first collective agreement. In each subsequent round of bargaining, the parties will make proposals to add/delete language or modifying existing language in the existing agreement. The collective agreement evolves over the years, but there are generally many provisions which remain the same. Where there is a bargaining unit that has been established for a long period of time, most collective agreements will contain provisions which have been in the agreement for decades. As a junior associate, I would sometimes be assigned to go back through 50 or 60 years of dusty typewritten collective agreements and compare the provisions to show how the current language had developed.

[As an aside, I assume that's the kind of glamour that undergrads are dreaming of when they sign up to write the LSAT...]

The AC pilots' collective agreement is is available to view online (I'd link to it but don't have enough posts to link). It's 289 pages long, and is significantly more complex than the average collective agreement given the nature of the bargaining unit, including licensing, safety, and scheduling issues. If the parties tried to start from scratch and renegotiate the entire agreement, I can't even imagine how long it would take. It would probably also result in absolute chaos once the new agreement was implemented - all of the systems that manage scheduling, human resources, payroll etc. would need to be updated at once, and there would be a huge amount of confusion.

There are very unusual situations where the parties might agree to start anew and renegotiate all or most of the collective agreement, but it's not something that would typically occur. I'm not questioning the suggestion that there may be provisions in the AC pilots' agreement which are outdated and should be negotiated - I have no idea - but the fact that the collective agreement contains language that is ten (or twenty) years old isn't really issue in and of itself. It's just a normal part of the collective bargaining process.

My understanding is that the union is emphasizing the fact that the previous contract is ten years old to highlight the fact that they have not negotiated increases during the last few years where inflationary pressures have been significant and many Canadian bargaining units have received higher than average increases. I can't imagine that they are suggesting that it is an issue that there are provisions in the current agreement that have been brought forward from previous contracts.