Seeker

Last numbers I saw had AC with a 44% market share domestically. September being the shoulder season I would expect Westjet, Flair, Porter have extra capacity available so the net loss might be 40% or even as low as 35%. Jazz would get re-deployed to service the holes. A significant impact on travel options no doubt but does it rise to the level of a national emergency that necessitates a weak minority government to intervene? I guess we'll see.

Well done. Further calculations show the kinetic energy is almost exactly the same as a 2000 kg vehicle traveling at 40 kph and, although travelling at the same speed as a bullet, the amount of energy is 356 times greater due to the higher mass. To convert to something easily understood - the hammer would hit the ground with the same energy as is contained in 30 Big Macs or what an average horse would eat in two days or what a 35 lb dog would eat in a month.

I'm certainly no expert on this but doesn't the NDA prevent this? Or shouldn't it prevent this? I don't suppose a NDA is required by the regulations but if one is signed as part of it... Also, "leaking" information is a sort of backdoor way for the company to go around the union leadership and bargain directly with the members which is forbidden by the regs. Perhaps in some cases but ALPA has not done this. All they have said is generalities or responses to the leaked information. The "we offered them 30%" came from the company. Or until the lockout happens.

https://media.aircanada.com/2024-09-09-Air-Canada-Prepares-for-Orderly-Shutdown-to-Mitigate-Customer-Impact-Resulting-from-Labour-Disruption MONTREAL, Sept. 9, 2024 /CNW/ - Air Canada today said that it is finalizing contingency plans to suspend most of its operations. Talks between the company and the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), representing more than 5,200 pilots at Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge, continue, but the parties remain far apart. Unless an agreement is reached, beginning on September 15, 2024, either party may issue a 72-hour strike or lock out notice, which would trigger the carrier's three-day wind down plan. "Air Canada believes there is still time to reach an agreement with our pilot group, provided ALPA moderates its wage demands which far exceed average Canadian wage increases. However, Canadians have recently seen the chaos abrupt airline shutdowns cause for travellers, which obliges us to do everything we can to protect our customers from an increasingly likely work stoppage. This includes the extremely difficult decision to begin an orderly shutdown of Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge once a 72-hour strike or lock out notice is given, possibly as early as this Sunday," said Michael Rousseau, President and Chief Executive Officer of Air Canada. Air Canada and ALPA have been in discussions for 15 months. Although tentative agreement has been reached on a large number of items for a new collective agreement, the union remains inflexible on its unreasonable wage demands. The company is committed to maintaining its pilots' historic position as the best paid commercial pilots in Canada and is continuing to negotiate to secure such an agreement. Alternatively, it has offered to the union to submit to arbitration. To date, the Federal Labour Minister has assisted the negotiation process by appointing a conciliator and mediator, and if a negotiated settlement is not reached, Air Canada would look to the government to intervene, as it has in recent labour disputes, to avoid a major disruption for Canadian travellers and other stakeholders. (bolding mine) A timeline of negotiations, backgrounders on the issues, pilot compensation and other information about the negotiations is available on our Media Centre.

Interesting numbers; 63 million dollars in 1975 is 350 million in 2024 dollars. Don't know if you did the math on that or are some kind of math savant! While watching the clip towards the end with the guy driving pins in the top section with a 5lb sledgehammer all I could wonder was what's the terminal velocity of a sledgehammer dropped from 1800' AGL and how big the hole in the sidewalk would be?

Yes, quite the mystery. What this country really needs is some sort of agency that would monitor these sorts of situations. You know, to hold everyone accountable to the rules and laws, etc.

Here's a cool vid about construction of the CN Tower. The music will drive you bonkers but there is some interesting shots of the final topping and the Toronto skyline at the end.

Hmmm, well, maybe I'm wrong about CN CPKC. I know the NDAs are a standard feature of bargaining but maybe not in that case. Certainly was in the AC/ALPA bargaining though.

Wow! 30% is an amazing deal, right? How come they rejected it? First, it's not really 30%. It's 20%, 3.3%, 3.3%, 3.3% - a four year deal. Second, the end result is that an AC A320 pilot would still earn less than a Westjet B737 pilot. Third, there is no description of what "improvements" in productivity or scope the company has left out of their "leaked" info. Fourth, over the last 10 years the annual pay increase for pilots has been 0.5%. Nope that's not a typo. The AC pilots have fallen so far behind the industry that it's time to recover and 30% over 4 years won't do it. Fifth, when is any corporation in Canada going to get penalized for bad faith bargaining? This information was intentionally leaked by management against the NDA they signed for the sole intention of turning public sentiment against the pilots. CN and CPKC did the exact same thing - "leaked" some carefully selected information about the negotiations to turn sentiment against the union. Where's the government to fine or otherwise penalize the coroporation?

The difference between a pilot and a lawyer and between a pilot and a surgeon is that the pilot's along for the ride. This is a very strong motivator. I wonder if a lawyer was going to share the same sentence as his client if there'd be more effort put in? Of course the vast majority of lawyers are fine and there are many life situations where they are indispensable so I make no blanket statements and hope if I have to make a midnight call that it gets answered. Anyway, the point of my post was that a minimum level of skill for a pilot is enough that he doesn't get killed, the minimum level of competence for a lawyer (surgeon, engineer) is that they don't get reported to their ethics board for review.

I think you're wrong here Kip. These are not unskilled minimum wage staff demanding "stuff" for free. These are pilots who have paid far more than you might realize to get where they are and want a fair wage. You might see the "entitled" when you are out and about but these guys aren't them.

Enlighten us. APLA is obviously mindful that their own members are reading and following what is disseminated publicly and AC is clearly speaking to their customers and investors but who is the target audience - the government?

Hey, good news! Oh, wait, maybe they're not serious and are just making happy noises for the public?

Click the pic below and a another page full of photos will load. Two thousand pilots at the four bases including pilots from Westjet, Transat, Jazz, Delta, United and others.

No, please don't (quietly withdraw). I value these opportunities to test my foil as I don't get many. Perhaps I came across too strongly - I enjoy the debate.

I'm not sure what union you are referring to or imagining but the "average" pilot must successfully pass multiple exams and demonstrations of skills and technical knowledge every year. The average pilot flies the airplane to the destination according to assigned flying. The average train engineer moves the trains. Perhaps you're thinking about municipal workers sleeping in their trucks behind the strip mall when they should be filling potholes? There is no ability to shirk work or under-achieve as a pilot or train engineer. Surely you are not comparing minimum wage fast food workers with pilots or rail engineers? The discussion about the value of increasing minimum wage is an interesting one but has no relevance here. I suspect you've been served the "non-pilot" talking points as pilots tend to underplay the reality, even to friends. The problem is that it's impossible to describe without coming off as if you're trying to be dramatic and solicit admiration. I only mention here because your comments seem to be in the area of "piloting is nothing special".

True. The whole idea behind a "corporation" is to be as greedy as possible - generally phrased as to "seek maximum profit for it's shareholders". Some corporations are evil. Not that I think it's a goal but they certainly are conscienceless. Yes. What else should they be motivated by? Unions seek the best deal for their members in the same way that corporations seek maximum profit. Yes, it does. Unless, of course, they are an essential service. Right now the gov and the corps want to have their cake and eat it too. Are the railways an essential service (with the associated rights and obligations) or not? If they are - binding arbitration, if they are not then their rights have been breached. They seek salaries and benefits commensurate with the cost and effort to obtain the required training and skills along with the lifestyle impacts and responsibility the career demands. In that case let's include executives that can't manage their way out of a wet paper bag. Let's include elected members who can't understand that hiring your brother-in-law's consulting firm for a sole-source, no-bid contract is an ethics violation. It's true that occasional, rare accidents find human error as an underlying cause or partially at fault. Same as when the space shuttle crashes, a train crashes, a nuclear reactor melts or a doctor makes an error. These are the sorts of comments that come from someone who has never experienced somatogravic and somatogyral Illusions. Someone who's never looked out the window at a wet runway in reduced visibility with moderate turbulence in a aircraft rapidly burning fuel and had to make a snap decision to land or go to the alternate airport. No, I'm not trying to make pilots look like movie action heroes - the point is that the job is far, far more complicated than the public realizes. I hired a lawyer recently and it's been nothing but incompetence. Many of my friends have the same story. If pilots flew aircraft like lawyers lawyer there'd be a crash every day. What risk? Your point is obviously dealing with "essential service" designated unions. The AC pilots are not an essential service and neither are/were the railways. The gov and the CIRB acted illegally in the railway matter. What will be the consequence? Nothing. They'll say, "oh, sorry, we were wrong", nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Read that carefully - they were both voting to authorize a strike - that's not the same as serving strike notice. The headline is misleading. In fact the union offered to stagger the negotiations back in May/June to prevent the simultaneous lockout or strike and the companies refused to accept it. This was because the companies knew if only one company was shutdown the chance of the gov intervening would be reduced. The companies orchestrated the shutdown. It was the companies who were holding the population hostage. They obviously decided that the 3 or 4 day shutdown with gov intervention to end it would cost less than what the employees were asking for. https://teamsters.ca/blog/2024/06/07/cn-and-cpkc-reject-offer-to-stagger-negotiations/

I also expect this. No doubt they are hoping for the same sort of government intervention.

Hah! If that's true why not make them work for minimum wage? Why not make everyone work for minimum wage? It would certainly make things cheaper for the Canadian citizen. In fact, why pay people anything at all - cheaper still.

So where is the balance between worker's rights and the company's economic interest? I totally understand the importance of the transport industry but if the company can just refuse to bargain and rely on the gov to force the resolution there is no balance. Maybe the entire transport industry should be an essential service with associated obligations on both parties?

I think the explanation is much more basic. The unions wanted to have staggered negotiations so they could leverage the losses of one company against the other and the companies wanted simultaneous negotiations so they could leverage the short but intense economic pressures against the unions. The companies obviously knew (or guessed, fortuitously) that the government would force arbitration and end it and decided the cost of a shutdown for a few days was less than the cost of giving the employees what they wanted.

Hello dagger, glad to see your participation. The unions did attempt to stagger the negotiations and this was rejected by the corporations. I believe this was done to bring the most pressure possible on the government to intervene by the corporations! It's clear they had no desire to actually negotiate believing the feds would intervene as they did. They anticipated and planned the shutdown and the CIRB order. https://teamsters.ca/blog/2024/06/07/cn-and-cpkc-reject-offer-to-stagger-negotiations/

Yes, that's what I'm saying. The arbitration comes to a new contract and that bargaining cycle is done. If the court decides the gov acted illegally, so what? They have a contract and there's nothing due to them for what they lost in the process. The only way to get a better contract is next bargaining cycle. This completely undermines the worker's rights. The only "cost" to the gov is being seen by the public as having intervened and, TBH, most people don't care, they just don't want to be inconvenienced.

So, the railway workers are forced back to work and two years from now the Supreme Court deems the gov's action illegal - what are the implications, what remedy or compensation is due? I see the AC pilots in the same situation; it goes to midnight and they're out on the street (strike or lockout) after a short period (couple of days or a week) the gov instructs the CIRB to direct them to arbitration and they go back to work. The arbitration process results in a new contract and 2 years later the Supreme Court says the whole thing was illegal. Now what? Too bad, so sad and the pilots get nothing?