Air Canada ground crews at Pearson airport in Toronto went on strike yesterday, essentially shutting down the airline’s operations for a few hours, and resulting in the cancellation of dozens of flights.
The reason for the strike? Workers were upset because they were facing disciplinary action for punching out early:
Bill Trbovitch — another union spokesman — told The Canadian Press the dispute was over how workers punch out at the end of a shift. “We know that it is over a long-standing issue,” he said.
CFTO’s Graham Richardson reported that up to 100 employees were facing disciplinary action over abusing how they signed out, with some people signing out each other out late.
Air Canada did a long investigation of this practice that included the use of hidden cameras to gather evidence.
“This was coming to a head today, in terms of firing people over this,” he said. “That’s when union members took it into their own hands and walked off the job and shut down the biggest airport in the country.”
However, Duffy said a number of workers said the problem was a known one for years and they didn’t know why Air Canada was going after it now. “They say it’s an uncontracted perk,” he added.
That, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with the collective work ethic of far too many unions. “How dare they expect us to work?”
They say it’s an uncontracted perk
Is that like taking office supplies home? or using the office phone and time for personal calls?
I disagree, sort of, management (there’s an oxymoron for you…) should have gone the grievance route or at least given fair warning that the practice would not be tolerated after a certain date and any infractions would result in … ‘specify punishment’… up to and including dismissal. Just dropping the hammer on the employees, who were probably under the impression the matter was still being discussed, is a might high handed, and dismissal is HUGE overkill!
The cost to the Airline of the (absolutely)forseeable wildcat strike will far far exceed all losses from early punchouts.
Whatever mgmnt. toady came up with this plan should be thinking in terms of a job change.