WestJet Airlines maintenance engineers strike before long weekend

Nilutpal Timsina

Updated June 29, 2024 at 2:28 a.m.·2 min read

WestJet airline signage is pictured at Vancouver's international airport in Richmond

By Nilutpal Timsina

(Reuters) -Aircraft maintenance engineers and other technical staff at Canada's WestJet Airlines went on strike at the start of a long weekend on Friday, after rounds of negotiations failed to produce an agreement on pay and working conditions.

WestJet expressed outrage at the strike during the Canada Day weekend, saying it would hold the union "100% accountable for the unnecessary stress and costs incurred as a result."

Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan, seeking to avert the strike, had intervened on Thursday after WestJet began canceling flights, ordering Canada's industrial relations board to impose final binding arbitration in the dispute.

The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) defended the strike in a statement on Friday, saying O'Regan's order was silent on "employees' fundamental right to strike," as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The union said it had served a strike notice on June 18 after 97% of its members voted to reject a tentative pay deal reached in May but that negotiators returned to the bargaining table two days later.

That round also failed, and the union served a second strike notice, with employees walking off the job at 7:30 p.m. ET (2330 GMT), AMFA said.

Calgary-based WestJet, which is backed by Onex Corp and competes with Air Canada, said it was canceling 150 flights for Saturday due to the strike, impacting about 20,000 passengers.

"Additional cancellations are anticipated by Saturday morning if the strike is not called off or intervention does not happen immediately", it said.

The airline said it was actively pursuing measures to minimize flight disruption, including asking for immediate action by the Canadian government.

The union said the airline had told it that it would not engage in further collective bargaining in Toronto, citing the government-imposed arbitration. The airline also rejected a request for continuation of collective bargaining in Calgary next week, the union said.

It said its bargaining committee was standing by to continue discussions with the airline and was available to resume collective bargaining over the weekend and into next week.

(Reporting by Nilutpal Timsina and Aatreyee Dasgupta in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid, William Mallard, Himani Sarkar and Tomasz Janowski)

Reuters
Exclusive-WestJet Airlines strike to continue until deal reached with mechanics, union says
MONTREAL (Reuters) -A strike by WestJet Airlines' mechanics that has led to hundreds of canceled flights over Canada's long holiday weekend will continue until a deal is reached, the union's president told Reuters on Sunday. Bret Oestreich, president of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, said the two sides will reconvene with a mediator on Sunday. The union represents around 680 workers at WestJet, including aircraft maintenance engineers, who went on strike on Friday after 97% of its members rejected a pay deal reached in May.
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