Canada’s aviation industry could become the third transport sector to be hit by industrial action in the country after the pilots of Air Canada voted overwhelmingly in favour of taking strike action if a new contract is not secured with the airline by mid-September.
The Air Line Pilots Association International’s (ALPA) Air Canada membership voted 98% in favour of industrial action with a 98% turnout after more than a year of negotiations that have failed to reach a collective agreement.
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Charlene Hudy, chair of the Air Canada ALPA Master Executive Council, said: “Our goal is to avoid a strike, and our focus remains on modernizing our contract for Air Canada pilots.
“However, management continues to force us closer to a strike position by not listening to our needs at the negotiating table regarding fair compensation, respectable retirement benefits, and quality-of-life improvements.”
ALPA’s Air Canada department said it was particularly confident in its ability to take strike action if needed after approval from ALPA’s executive committee of a $5m grant from the union’s war chest.
While the federal conciliation process between the union and the airline will end on 26 August, if a deal is not reached, pilots will not be able to legally take action until 17 September, after a mandatory 21-day cooling-off period.
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By GlobalDataALPA negotiators have been looking to bring pilots’ salaries up to the same standard as their US counterparts, with the most recent contract negotiated with Air Canada in 2014 putting the airline’s pilots on half the pay of their peers, according to the union.
Air Canada defended the length of negotiations as an expected part of “refreshing” a 10-year-old contract deal and said the vote for strike action was a normal part of negotiations.
Arielle Meloul-Wechsler, chief human resources officer and public affairs at Air Canada, said: “We’re still actively at the table working very collaboratively with our pilot union to reach, what we hope will be, a very good deal at the table for all parties concerned.
“Our goal is to reach that deal at the table in the next few weeks.”
While the strike vote is not binding, it means Canada’s aviation sector joins its maritime and rail industries under threat of industrial action in the coming months.
Talks between the country’s two largest rail freight providers and the Teamsters union fell through earlier this month and the Canadian government has now stepped in to ease the dispute.
Hundreds of dockworkers in British Columbia are also set to vote on strike action in the coming days and could cause mass shipping delays if negotiations break down for the second time in just over a year.
