Fiordland

The part about "making it uncomfortable for those in the company who weren’t willing to change" is part of the problem. That is the wrong culture for any organisation.

Well it is ironic in some ways. The "evolving culture and being willing to embrace change" looks to be a key success factor for senior management as they evolve to a unionized environment.

Given the uncertainty I have just book flights to Saskatoon, Toronto and Montreal over the next month and half with AC instead of WS.

aerobod

It wasn’t inappropriate at all. It was taken as an attack on the culture by a number of people who wanted to return to the “little airline in the West” who took it to the press to serve their agenda. It was all about the next 20 years of WestJet and how the first 20 years that got us to where we were in 2016 wouldn’t get us to where we needed to be in 2022 without significant change. The reason why the vast majority of WestJetters in those meetings were extremely enthusiastic about what the changes meant. If you didn’t attend one of the meetings and are receiving information indirectly you won’t have an accurate impression of what it was all about.

robsaw

While I am no union fan, the statement below shows why any comment about change was hollow coming from Sarestky.

"“This isn’t the first drive, it won’t be the last drive. At some point, will they be successful? They might, but I’m going to go down fighting to prevent the unionization of WestJet,” Saretsky said."

Westjet absolutely needs to change to grow - they've got a big share of the domestic market so international is the only way to go. Combining that with Swoop for the low-end in an overlapping time-period may not have been the best move but change it was. Apparently the BoD also questioned his attitude and strategy.

Error 601

Whatever it was I would be fired if I said anything similar.

james dean

...and therein lies true disconnect, management thought one way but the worker bees (aka owners) thought the opposite, which = union drives and subsequent job action.

aerobod

A minority of employees, yes, especially in flight crews. The quandary is that opinions are split between non-management employees in a way that is not easily resolvable. The entrepreneurial spirit is not strong in the pilot group these days, but is stronger than ever in many employee groups.

As I am no longer an employee, I will express my opinion that the pilots will likely move to a non risk based compensation plan (mainly base wage, as opposed to the current 60% base, 40% company performance related compensation). This will then make the flying look like it is contracted to ALPA on a fixed rate basis. Other employees will continue to be on the performance based compensation plan that will see them do proportionately better than the pilots in good times and share the pain when times are bad.

fly_yag

So I've got a family wedding in YYC on May 26th and ~15-20 guests (including a number of members of the wedding party) are coming from various parts of Canada flying on WS. Unfortunately it doesn't look like WS is offering refunds at this point so there aren't a lot of options to rebook on AC without incurring a potentially huge penalty. Any thoughts on how this will play out or how to mitigate the risk?

tracon

Employees will buy into the risk based pay scheme when they can upgrade to captain within a couple years.
A rapidly rising stock price also helps. How is the royal family doing by the way?
When you've got 10 year f/o's the risk based pay model no longer works.

30% annual growth doesn't go on forever.

Having Western based crews do a 5:00 departure, 12 hour day from NFLD isn't safe.

HomerJ

Just booked 2 x flights in the next 2 weeks.
Ya I'm a gambler.

Frequentlander

Were the tickets cheaper than you might expect? I'm interested to see if the threat of strike action is putting pressure on pricing.

Sopwith

In the classic change management process it is common to identify four groups of employees:

1. The enthusiastic champions: "Rah Rah! Let's do this!"
2. The less enthusiastic supporters: "Sounds like it might be okay, let's try it."
3. The sceptics: "I'm not sure about this..."
4. The staunch resistors: "Over my dead body!"

The recommended way of dealing with Group 4 is to move them off the bus because there's no way you'll ever get them to be supporters, and they will invariably obstruct the process. The finesse comes in keeping Group 4 small, and getting rid of them quickly before they cause too much damage.

tcook052

WestJet's labour dispute is about expanding union influence, not protecting existing jobs | CBC News

WestJet's labour dispute is about expanding union influence, not protecting existing jobs

Fiordland

Let me start by saying I don't work at WS and did not attend these meeting. So who I am to quote what was said.....

If the quotes are true and you have a CEO tells the assembled staff that they need to push the employees in Category 4 out that is simply bad form and poor judgment. You have management deal with employees in group 4 one-on-one.

tracon

Only the opinion of the author and a few others no doubt.

Don't know why the need to hire foreigners when there are lots of Canadians with pilots licenses.

Altaflyer

A week away from a possible strike and its crickets from Westjet. People who have flights booked deserve better than this.