October 03, 2019
To All Members – Air Canada Cargo Toronto
Cargo Subcontract Arbitration Update
Please be advised that Local Lodge 2323 and District Lodge 140 presented the Cargo
Subcontracting Grievance to arbitration yesterday. The entire history of the matter,
including the blatant violation of our collective agreement subcontract provisions was
capably presented via our lawyer Ian Roland.
The Company disclosed their reasons for initiating a subcontract of all Temperature
Sensitive Cargo to GTA DNATA. We responded that we want the work back and
requested substantive monetary compensation and other penalties be awarded to us for
non-compliance.
Our lawyer also requested numerous internal documents in order to verify all aspects of
the matter. Although Air Canada considers many of these Union requested documents
to be confidential and sensitive proprietary information, they are compelled to disclose.
Air Canada agreed in the interim that it will again utilize the cooling/storage capacity in
Cargo 1, which it recently stopped using and sent all of that work to DNATA.
We also requested that should any staffing surpluses arise while this work is
subcontracted that the company must continue to carry on payroll a like number of
employees.
Moving forward, the arbitration will continue on January 17, 2020, with the requested
evidentiary documents required to complete the matter.
We thank the many members and Shop Stewards who have and continue to offer
assistance by providing the evidence and firsthand knowledge required to see this
egregious violation stopped.
In solidarity,
Dave Flowers
President
Local Lodge 2323
Paul Lefebvre
General Chairperson
District Lodge 140
