DESPITE all of its efforts, Canadian low-cost airline WestJet is losing the battle to stop its employees from forming unions.
Pilots flying for WestJet Encore announced on Wednesday they have the numbers to unionise, which follows certification of pilots flying for the Calgary-based company’s flagship carrier.
An ‘overwhelming majority’ of Encore pilots filed membership cards, according to the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA). The union will officially form once it receives approval from the Canada Industrial Relations Board. About 500 pilots work at Encore, which is WestJet’s regional airline.
Captain Dan Adamus, ALPA Canada president said in a statement: ‘We’re excited for the Encore pilots, and proud of their hard work in organising this group, gathering membership cards in a short time. When they join ALPA, they will add their voices to the thousands of union-represented airline pilot voices in Canada.’
ALPA also said that once certification is approved, the group will begin negotiating its first collective agreement. WestJet declined to comment because it has not been served with the union application.
CUPE, Unifor, the United Steelworkers, and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers also began union drives this summer. CUPE is pushing to represent all flight attendants.
Until the pilot groups were successful, several union drives fell short since 2014 as WestJet management tried to sway employees not to become unionised. The company argued against unionisation, saying it would harm the unique culture of the airline and its financial position.
Management frequently delivered its message to workers and co-founder Clive Beddoe even wrote to employees, claiming that WestJet’s success hinged on its ‘unity of purpose’ and co-operation instead on confrontation. WestJet CEO Gregg Saretsky took a jab at union drives last year during an employee pep rally.
He said then: ‘There are WestJetters who don’t contribute positively to the culture. And if we can’t bring them back into the fold, we have to make it uncomfortable for them to stay here. They need to find their happiness elsewhere.’
ALPA is the world’s largest pilot union and already represents pilots at several Canadian airlines including Air Transat, Bearskin, Calm Air, Canadian North, First Air, and Jazz Aviation. Meanwhile, the Standing up for Minority Rights movement is insisting that Muslim women in Canada should be able to wear the Burka, which is set to be banned by the introduction of Bill 62.
In a statement, one of their members Archana Rampure said: ‘My family spent years in Saudi Arabia when I was a kid. My mother – and all the other women we knew, most of whom were not Saudi – had to wear big black burkas and headscarves. By the time I was ten, I did too.
‘We all hated this, Muslim or not, observant or not. Pretty much all the women I knew hated these extra layers, and they hated the fact that they had no choice but to wear these things.
‘If you didn’t wear them, religious police with long staves would tap you on the shoulder and yell at you, and if you still didn’t cover up, they would threaten to beat you (or the men you were with). Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, a despotic state. Human rights do not exist in Saudi Arabia. There is no freedom of religion (or freedom from religion) in Saudi Arabia. But here’s the thing: Canada and Quebec are not Saudi Arabia.
‘It is no more acceptable for women in Quebec to be punished (because to deny people public services is actually to punish them with economic sanctions) based on what they are wearing than it is for Saudi Arabia to punish women for what they are not wearing.
‘Human rights do exist in Canada and in Quebec. And, by definition, human rights are absolute – they do not extend only to people like us, or people who agree with us.
‘The test of human rights is actually when we are forced to confront the humanity of people who are most unlike us.
‘No vote in the National Assembly or in the House of Commons can abrogate human rights. The rights of minorities are not determined by the wishes of the majority. I happen to believe that Quebec’s Premier Philippe Couillard is wrong when he says there is a consensus in Quebec and in Canada that the transaction of public services has to happen with “open face”.
‘But even if he were right, even if vast majorities of people in Quebec and Canada support Bill 62, it would still be illegitimate. We are free here to believe in and to practise whatever religion, and to not believe in and not practise any religion.
‘The right to public services is not dependent on religion – to have services depend on religion would be a throwback to the time when religious orders provided our services. To my comrades in Quebec who may have a visceral discomfort with visible symbols of religion precisely because they do remember a time when churches provided services in Quebec, I do want to say this: having had the experiences I had when I was a kid, I don’t like niqabs or burkas or even headscarves.
‘But I don’t have to like them to respect the rights of women to wear any of these garments. I don’t like a lot of things: jazz, country music, pasta, and horror films. But I would never, ever, ever suggest that people don’t have the right to like any of these. I can and do like people who like jazz or eat pasta. These may seem like absurd comparisons but my point is that rights only become salient when they are challenged.
‘So, no one has to like niqabs or burkas or even headscarves. And Quebecers who don’t like niqabs don’t have to wear them. But they absolutely have to respect the rights of women to wear what they please. Nothing justifies the use of law to try to coerce women into dressing in certain ways by taking away universal access to services.
‘In a democracy, access to services is what makes us all equal. And by passing Bill 62, Quebec’s National Assembly has said that some women in Quebec are not equal. For a long time, progressives in the ROC (Rest of Canada, outside of Quebec) have been told that we have to make common cause with the left in Quebec, with the caveat that the question of the nation complicates the usual right-left split.
‘That deference to Quebec has allowed for a strange elision of racism from any discussion of nationalism in Quebec and also on the left in Canada. But on this question, there is no space for equivocation: the left in Quebec has to reject Bill 62 because the Bill is racist, and make common cause with the anti-racist left in the ROC.
‘If Quebec wants the left in the rest of Canada to defend their minority rights, then Quebec needs to respect the rights of minorities within. Quebec’s National Assembly passed Bill 62: An Act to Foster Adherence to State Religious Neutrality in October 2017.
‘The law means that anyone either receiving or providing a provincial or municipal public service (ranging from health care to public transit) must uncover their faces. The legislation was introduced by the Liberals, and opposed by the Bloc Quebecois and the Coalition Avenir Quebec because “it didn’t go far enough”, since it allows for certain exceptions.
‘Quebec Solidaire, a left-wing party in the National Assembly, opposed the Bill on the grounds that it was hypocritical to pass such a Bill in a chamber where a giant crucifix hangs.’
