May 22, 2014 at 12:30 PM
At the end of April, Aeroplan approached Unifor with the intent of putting an
agreement in place to increase the number of hours for part-time workers. The
union listened and reviewed the company's proposal, which would see an increase
of working hours to all part time workers from 20 to 30 hours per week. The
company made it very clear that they did not want members to go through the
process of a shift bid; therefore required the union’s acceptance to put this
agreement in place.
The union returned to the company with a counter-proposal that was a
‘win-win’ scenario for both parties. Unifor proposed that instead of increasing
every part time member's schedule that – for a limited time period – 25
part-time employees be provisionally upgraded to full-time status (i.e. 40
hours/week) on a voluntary basis.
By proposing this amendment, the union made sure that members could either
choose to become full-time employees (for the duration of this new agreement)
and increase their hours to 30 or remain at their current 20-hour workweek.
Further, this scenario would avoid a new shift bid and not interfere with
members' existing schedules and summer plans as we knew it was important for our
membership.
On May 7th, Aeroplan released a bulletin canvasing members' as to who may
volunteer for the temporary increase of hours. As far as Unifor was concerned,
there were only a few minor details to confirm before signing this agreement.
These details were outlined in an email exchange between the company and union.
The company returned to the table advising that with the addition of the new
hours on the schedule, they would not be able to meet their targets as this
scenario would create a surplus of personnel on nights and weekends and would
create preferable shifts for junior employees.
Needless to say, the union was very disappointed when the company made this
announcement as we saw an opportunity to lessen the effect of the recent layoffs
and downgrades from full-time to part status. We believed we could complete this
process without affecting our members’ lives with a new shift bid. Due to the
company’s shift in direction, we could not continue in this process and walked
away from the deal.
After many discussion over the weekend, the union returned to the table to
get the most out of this situation as we realized that some of our members would
benefit from this upgrade to [temporary] full time status.
Your bargaining committee is proud to advise that we have reached an
agreement with Aeroplan to upgrade 14 employees to [temporary] full-time status.
Other members will be able to increase their hours up to 30, while others will
keep their current 20 hour work week. This process will be completed by
seniority. The schedule will be built the week of June 2nd and agents will bid
their schedule on June 12th and 13th.
We apologize if the recent events may have caused distress, but we are
confident that the current deal is beneficial and acceptable to all members.
In solidarity,
Your Aeroplan Bargaining Committee:
Vince De Sua
Stephen Lussier
Ross McConkey
Jane Winfield
Jamie Ross, Local 2002 President
Marcel
Rondeau, Local 2002 Executive Assistant
Leslie Dias, Unifor National
Representative
For more information, please contact:
Marcel Rondeau, Unifor Local 2002 Executive
Assistant
/14-05-22 Unifor reaches deal with Aeroplan on part-time shift agreement HTML en.txt