Good jobs at Pearson imperiled by contract-flipping, unions say
Is Pearson Airport becoming the “Walmart of the skies?”
As unrest builds over layoffs and low wages, another 300 airport workers are set to lose their jobs. The culprit, unions say, is a practice known as contract-flipping.
Hector Silva, 53, is bracing himself to lose the job he’s held for more than a decade.
As a fuel serviceman at Pearson, he is the latest casualty of what critics call contract flipping: when contracts are awarded to different service providers every few years, often resulting in mass job losses.
That’s what awaits Silva and hundreds of his colleagues when Aircraft Service International Group (ASIG) takes over fuelling services from Allied Aviation this fall.
If they’re lucky, the workers will land a job with the new company. Silva, a father of three, is a strong candidate for rehire, given his lengthy experience as a fueller — but only, it seems, if he is willing to take a 30-per-cent pay cut.
He recently attended a job fair at the airport, where ASIG told him his seniority would earn him $14.50 with the new company.
His hourly salary is currently almost $21.
“The cost of living keeps on going up,” Silva says.
“Do I have to start from scratch again after I gave them 15 years of my working life?”
Workers and unions complain that Silva’s predicament is increasingly common.
And Michael Corrado, whose International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers represents Pearson’s fuel staff, says the impact on morale at the airport is devastating.
His assessment of the prevailing mood at Pearson, as the Pan Am Games approach?
“It’s a powder keg.”
Contracts for airport services have historically switched every few years. But in the past, workers would usually just migrate with the contract with little change to their wages and entitlements, says Sean Smith of the Toronto Airport Council of Unions.
Now, unions say, the practice has morphed into a way to suppress wages. And when contracts flip, they say companies can use the re-hiring process to “purge” elderly, injured or pro-union workers.
Harjinder Badial of Teamsters Local 419, who represent de-icers at Pearson, says he noticed that pattern emerge when the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) took over the contract from former provider Servisair.
“Anybody that was really a whistleblower, anybody that was really pro-union, or anybody that just stuck up for another worker wasn’t offered a job,” he alleges.
Collective agreements are also scrapped whenever contracts flip, meaning that workers must organize again with another union. That, critics argue, undercuts unions’ ability to negotiate better conditions for their workers over time.
But as a result of a legislative loophole, the practice is legal.
Usually, when a business with unionized workers is sold or bought out, the new buyer inherits the existing collective agreement. Under the Canada Labour Code, this is referred to as successor rights. It means that even if a business’s owners change, workers keep their jobs and their union.
But successor rights don’t apply to subcontracting, common in sectors such as air transit. As a result, new contractors have no responsibility to keep on their predecessors’ workers. NDP MP Andrew Cash, who is trying to introduce new legislation to protect precarious workers, says that has to change.
“When we see federally regulated sectors enter the race to the bottom, it’s very, very alarming.”
On Thursday, the NDP’s transport and labour critics wrote to their ministerial counterparts to express concern over the refuelling job losses which they noted could result in “sensitive work (ending) up being performed by either poorly trained or unqualified workers.”
In an emailed statement to the Star, the federal Ministry of Labour said that it was “committed to creating workplaces that are safe, fair, productive and encourage co-operative workplace relations.”
The GTAA said in an email that its “role as the airport authority is to ensure that services are provided in a safe, efficient and effective manner.”
In response to queries about changes in de-icing services at the airport, and union concerns that workers were unfairly weeded out, the GTAA said that it “totally disagreed” with any assertion that employees were hired for any reason other than experience and skills.
Airports often justify strategies such as contract flipping using the language of efficiency and quality control, says York University professor Steven Tufts.
But south of the border, many airports are moving in the opposite direction in recognition that their vital services can’t be delivered effectively if workers are poorly treated.
Los Angeles and San Francisco’s airports, for example, have committed to paying all of their employees a living wage — even those hired by contractors.
“The big overarching thing is, how much money can the state really expect to generate from the airport on the backs of low-wage workers?” Tufts says.
“The GTAA has forgotten its mandate,” adds the Smith.
“The reason that the airport authority was established is to be a community airport with a focus on regional development”