Angry in the Great White North

Before I wade too deeply, however, a little background should be offered.  Some readers might be too young to remember but there used to be two major airlines in Canada.  There was Air Canada and Canadian Airlines.   Air Canada ultimately bailed out the money-losing Canadian Airlines by merging the companies.  The Liberal government rejoiced and approved the merger as they didn’t want to open up our skies to foreign competition.

With that merger came the problem of what to do with the pilots.  Pilots live by a strict pecking order defined by seniority.  Generally I dislike seniority-base systems, since it rewards staying power instead of skill.  But certain professions stand apart.  The skill spread between individual airline pilots is small, as the level of responsibility assigned to a pilot is such that there can’t be much room for anything less than near perfection.  Since general skill level and professionalism is essentially constant, seniority becomes the obvious way of ordering pilots.

So seniority is the means by which pilots are distinguished, and the problem of how to deal with pilot seniority at Air Canada has dragged on for years – which brings us to today.  A fair and balanced seniority integration system still hasn’t been implemented.  The pilots are still at each other’s throats over the issue, the price of jet fuel is going up, security costs have not let up, large foreign airlines are looking for merger and takeover opportunities to help survive the turmoil, and Stephane Dion is looking to make things worse with his carbon tax.

Is this a crisis?  Maybe not quite yet, since the pilots bargaining agreement with Air Canada isn’t up until June 2009, but the clock is ticking.   How can Air Canada fly if its pilots can’t agree to a seniority list?  One set of pilots seems to have won the lottery and don’t intend to deal away their winnings to the benefit of the original pilots at Air Canada. 

How did this seniority issue become such a mess? 

In 2001, arbitration took place and Morton Mitchnick designed a scheme to merge the seniority levels.  Well, the Canadian Airlines pilots hated it, and the CIRB agreed that Mitchnick had weighted the seniority of Air Canada pilots too favourably.  The CIRB was chaired by Paul Lordon at the time.  Remember that name.  So, in 2003, it was sent back to arbitration.  Lordon set out specific principles and directions to be followed for the next round.

Brian Keller chaired the next arbitration.  Unfortunately, Keller didn’t follow the principles Lordon directed were to be followed.   In fact, out of the three arbitration panelists, Mr. Keller’s voice was the final decision and the other two members disagreed with the Mr. Keller.  Keller, effectively, took the pendulum and swung it hard in the other direction, treating the seniority of Canadian Airline pilots with much for favour and literally discounting the seniority of the original Air Canada pilots.  Nice.  Imagine working somewhere and slowly moving up the depth charts and then one day someone says, “Sorry, we’ve just discounted your seniority and given your job to someone from another company with less seniority.  You will be paid less, you may see your kids and family less because you’ve got to work more days per month – and of course your pension won’t be as much.  Have a nice day.”

Seniority is a big deal for pilots.  It’s not about bragging rights.  It has serious consequences on their careers and on their lives.  Any changes and adjustments have to be handled very delicately.

Needless to say, there were a lot of disgruntled pilots.  After Lordon retired in 2003 the CIRB acted as though it was tired of listening to the case and the courts just kept deferring to the then tribunal (full of Liberal political appointees)  – even though 2 of 3 panelists on the Keller arbitration disagreed with Keller’s decision.  More frustrating was that Keller’s decision blatantly disregarded the directions that it was to have received from the Paul Lordon of the CIRB –namely pilots who flew similar aircraft were to be grouped together and the integration date was to be 2000.  When Keller implemented a punitive seniority “discount” on original Air Canada pilots and then moved the integration date of the pilots from 2000 to 2003 – it seems rather evident that a couple of key CIRB direction were broken. 

I have no idea how Keller’s decision was allowed to stand in the face of the ignored Lordon direction and despite the fact that Keller was not supported by his fellow co-panelists. 

Yet the Keller decision is still in place.  The passage of time has not soothed the pain.  Actually, since we’re talking about seniority here, the passage of time is probably making things worse for pilots who feel cheated.  Lordon has since left the CIRB, but the former head of the CIRB was retained to look at the decision again.  With an opportunity to undo the damage inflicted by Keller, Lordon made two fundamentally clear recommendations:  (1) dump the punitive seniority discount applied to original Air Canada pilots and (2) move the merger date back to when the merger actually took place in 2000, not 2003: 

The panel headed by Paul Lordon, former head of the Canadian Industrial Relations Board, says the often bitter impasse can be resolved by tinkering with the original arbitrator's ruling issued nearly five years ago.

The Air Canada Pilots Association-commissioned panel included two of its members but was boycotted by the former Canadian Airlines pilots.

The recommendations would involve removing a seniority discount applied to original Air Canada pilots and use of a 2000 merger date, as opposed to 2003 included in the Keller award that caused Air Canada pilots a five-year career disadvantage.

Panellist Serge Beaulieu said the proposed changes would allow Air Canada pilots to gain seniority while preserving the positions of former Canadian pilots by freezing their ability to gain seniority credits.

"It's not punitive to anybody," he said in an interview with The Canadian Press. "It's the right thing to do."

The Lordon report was tremendously significant.  It could have simply stated that new negotiations were required.   But Lordon took the step of recommending that the Keller decision ought to be modified instead ahead of new negotiations.

The recent Lordon Report recommendations ought to be taken under careful consideration by the federal government as well as the current members of the CIRB.  

Let us not forget that Air Canada is a creature of the federal government, since competition rules had to be suspended for the Air Canada and Canadian Airlines merger to take place in the first place.  Furthermore, the reason that Air Canada and Canadian Airlines merged was because the Liberals wanted to keep out foreign competition.  Who needs free trade agreements when protectionist policies buy so many more votes?  The federal government and CRIB have a role to play to clean up this mess. Paul Lordon has started the ball rolling in an attempt to find a fair and balanced seniority system – after all – this all he sought when he sent the Mitchnick award back to arbitration, which unfortunately ended up with the flawed Keller decision.   It’s time we take notice of this matter before the pilots are back at the table with Air Canada in 2009 – who knows what the future holds at that time?  But it doesn’t look like clear skies are on the horizon.  Our airline system is far more important, I think, than getting worked up over text message fees.