Last December, Unifor filed an application for certification with the Canada Industrial Relations Board to represent workers in WestJet’s Contact Centre.
These 800 workers include those working in guest services, quality, sales, disruption support, and air passenger protection regulations.
In Canada, unions must demonstrate support from half of the workers who will be represented by the proposed bargaining unit. That support must include signed membership cards and a $5 membership fee from each of those workers in the 50%.
If the union demonstrates that support, they can filed for certification, and the CIRB can move toward automatic certification; although, they could still require a certification vote from the workers.
The application process ended up delayed, as WestJet argued to the CIRB that some of the positions in the proposed bargaining unit should be in other bargaining units:
- APPR agents
- APPR specialists
- Group sales specialists
- Quality specialists
- Group sales senior specialists
Last month, the CIRB approved the application and included those positions in the bargaining unit.
They will hold a certification vote next Monday (14th), during which time, the workers can democratically choose whether to unionize with Unifor.
According to Unifor, workers at the Contact Centre “have felt the pressure of decisions about workload, scheduling, breaks, wages and constant workplace changes, without having a collective voice when those decisions are made”.
The union also claimed that WestJet had been laying off Contact Centre workers lately and moving over 400 positions to El Salvador.
Unifor is Canada’s largest private sector union, representing 320,000 workers in every major area of the economy, including 16,000 members in aviation and 26,000 members working in telecommunications.
They already represent thousands of WestJet workers in Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver who labour as customer service agents, coordinators, and ramp service workers.
If a majority of workers vote in favour of unionizing with unifor on Monday, one of their first orders of business will be to elect a bargaining team, who will begin negotiating their first collective agreement.
