Quebec to help Aveos ex-workers find jobs
Quebec Labour and Employment Minister Agnès Maltais announced Friday a program to help former Aveos Fleet Performance Inc. workers find jobs.
And, Maltais added, she’s “confident” Quebec will win its court challenge of Air Canada next month to force the Montreal airline to repatriate its heavy aircraft maintenance work in Montreal, work done by Aveos before its sudden shutdown in March.
“I think it’s a legal obligation for Air Canada (to do the work in Montreal) and I think (the carrier) should do that. So yes, I am confident,” she told reporters.
And Malta is welcomed Manitoba’s joining of Quebec’s suit.
“Now there are two of us pushing Air Canada to respect the law,” she said.
An Air Canada spokeswoman, Isabelle Arthur, said in an email that the carrier “is in full compliance with all aspects of the (1988) Air Canada Public Participation Act, and, as this matter is still before the courts, we will not be providing further comments.”
The $1-million aid program will try to determine how many of the 1,800 aircraft repair workers fired in March have yet to find a job — estimated at 700 to 1,000 — and serve as a conduit to match skilled and trained workers with vacant posts in Quebec.
One of the main objectives, Maltais said, is to get employers to recognize competencies acquired on the job over decades by workers who do not have diplomas.
Aveos shut its doors on March 18 and declared itself insolvent the next day.
Since then, Air Canada has dispersed the heavy repair and maintenance of its fleet around the globe.
Quebec filed a motion in Quebec Superior Court and proceedings begin Nov. 19, Maltais said.
The support program “is good news that will put some balm on the worries of the many who lost their jobs,” she said.
“The objective is to concentrate and coordinate better the efforts to help them to find other employment quickly.”
Employment Quebec will sketch a profile of the workers who are still unemployed and will then devise a strategy to find them work, including basic training and recognition of past experience.
Maltais said the details of how the plan will work are still being worked out by her department, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, industrial organizations and employment agencies.
“Aerospace is a particularly high value-added sector for Quebec and specifically Montreal, and we want to keep companies, jobs and our manpower,” she said.
Richard Guay, president of IAMAW Local 1751 that represented Aveos workers, said that “some call us when they find work, but most don’t. We’re evaluating that according to our intuitions and feedback from our members. But between 700 and 1,000 have not found new work.”
Jean Poirier, a former IAMAW of- ficial and now one of Maltais’s advisers who was deeply involved in setting up the aid program, predicted that Quebec and Manitoba would prevail in court.
“I’m telling you we’re going to win this thing in November. I believe that.”
Guay said that the support committee will help people who were trained at Air Canada or Aveos but received no tangible confirmation or proof of their skills.
“It will set up equivalencies (for skills and qualification) so these people can find work at Bombardier or Bell Helicopter or elsewhere.”
Guay added that some former Aveos workers received training in areas such as aerostructures and would need little retraining to switch from repair and maintenance, their former expertise, to manufacturing, the sector in which most Montreal aviation firms are engaged.
Lyne Ste. Marie, a 45-year-old former pneumatic mechanic who started working at Aveos in 1997 as an entry-level sandblaster, said that after extensive on-the-job training, she received approval from Transport Canada to certify certain work, a lengthy, meticulous and exacting process in aviation.
“But I don’t have a piece of paper from a school that says I have these skills,” Ste. Marie said.
“When I go to apply for a job, they ask me for a diploma from an aeronautics school, and I don’t have one.”
As a result, she said, she has not been able to secure a single job inter- view, let alone find a job.
“That’s why we’re going to work so that people like (Ste. Marie) get a recognition of the skills they learned on the floor,” Maltais said.
Mark Masluch, spokesperson for Bombardier Inc.’s customer services division, said that job seekers should visit the company’s website section for positions needed at http://careers.bombardier.com /home