Air Canada maintenance workers stage sit-in at MP’s office
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/03/2011 (5704 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
WINNIPEG — Dozens of Air Canada maintenance workers upset about the possibility of future job losses have launched a sit-in inside Tory MP Steven Fletcher’s local constituency office today.
The workers, all members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Airline Lodge 714, fear that the move to transfer hundreds of their jobs to Aveos — the company created for plane maintenance as part of Air Canada’s emergence from bankruptcy in 2004 — could leave many of them without jobs in future.
“We’re not leaving until we talk to Steven Fletcher,” said Kevin Polonuk, the local’s vice-president, as he stood inside Fletcher’s office in St. James with about 60 workers.
“We are also asking Mr. Chuck Strahl (federal Transport Minister) to address the Air Canada Act. We’re saying if they sold the overhaul work then they have violated the Air Canada Act.”
Polonuk said the act, formally known as the Air Canada Public Participation Act, was originally signed in 1988, and includes provisions for Air Canada to keep operational and overhaul centres in Winnipeg, Montreal and Mississauga. It was signed when Air Canada went from being a Crown corporation to a private company.
Polonuk said employees are now being told they have to choose between staying at Air Canada — where they have seniority and pensions — or go to Aveos, which now runs the long-term maintenance work.
But Polonuk said only 15 of the company’s 500 workers in Winnipeg will be able to stay with Air Canada and the workers fear that Aveos could shut down the Canadian facilities in future and do the work at its facility in El Salvador.
Last week, Strahl said in Ottawa that Aveos has told the government there will be no job losses and he said he didn’t believe the move to Aveos violated the act.
A spokesman for Fletcher said he will be available for an interview later today.