PBS Training Bid
*The information in this bulletin is subject to change*
Please note that all Annual Requalification Training (ART) for the November block month will be postponed. Details to follow in official training bulletin.
As you may be aware, today marks the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. In June, the Federal Government passed legislation to recognize September 30th as a statutory holiday, making it a paid day off for federal employees and staff in federally regulated workplaces.
From the 1880s through the 1990s, the Canadian government forcibly removed at least 150,000 Indigenous children from their homes and sent them to residential schools designed to sever them from their culture and assimilate them into Western ways — a system that a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008 called “cultural genocide”. At the schools, 70% of which were run by the Catholic Church, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and violence were commonplace.
Since that time there have been multiple discoveries of unmarked graves containing the remains of Indigenous children at the sites of defunct Canadian Indian residential schools in several provinces. The National Truth and Reconciliation Commission has estimated that approximately 4,100 children went missing from the schools, but a former Indigenous judge who headed the commission, Murray Sinclair, declared in an email, that he now believes the number to be “well over 10,000”.
These discoveries are a grim reminder of centuries of discrimination, abuse, and injustice that Indigenous people have faced and continue to face today.
Let us honour the Indigenous community by taking the time to learn, reflect and acknowledge the intergenerational harm that these residential schools have caused to them and stand in solidarity with the survivors and their families. The goals of this day in part will be to educate the Canadian public about the suffering of survivors. If this educational goal is met with success, it will alter the ways in which Canadians think about their culture and history, challenging their identity as members of a community. Such transformation, many believe, is the first step toward reconciliation between the two communities.
For those of you who would like to learn more about the efforts towards Truth and Reconciliation you can find the Calls to Action that resulted from the profoundly important work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission attached HERE.
In Solidarity,
Your Component Diversity Committee
An announcement was sent out 3 months ago advising of the upcoming decommissioning of the Old UI based on our PBS software provider NavBlue’s timelines. Since then, we have been reviewing both new and recurring issues with the New UI. While almost all of these are corrected by clearing your browser’s cache and web data, some require a modification to the software itself. NavBlue has acknowledged our reported increase in the need for crew members to manually clear their cache. They have created a fix to address the issue and it will be available in the next PBS release. At the same time, they have agreed to postpone the decommissioning of the Old UI to a subsequent release. There will therefore be an extension to the sunset period of the Old UI until the end of January 2022. Once the testing and installation of the fixes mentioned above are completed, we will inform you of the new timeline for the decommissioning of the Old UI.
In the meantime, the Old UI remains available. However, NavBlue will no longer be able to update it beyond its current state, release 21-2 installed in August. For the go forward, any new features, changes or enhancements made to the New UI will not be reflected in the Old UI. Therefore, we encourage you to migrate to the New UI as soon as possible.
The following New UI reference documents are available as an attachment below, on ACaeronet under Crew Scheduling & Planning >Bidding Tools & Information >Scroll down to Bulletins and on the CUPE Component website under Resources >PBS Bidder’s Guide & Bulletin Updates:
Your Local PBS Committee is an invaluable source of information. They routinely provide links to all PBS reference documents, YouTube videos showing the New UI and some even offer live online Zoom sessions to help you with the transition. For further assistance with the New UI and bidding, please contact your Local PBS Committee:
As you may recall just prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Union was set to commence the mediation stage of our 2019 Reopener as outlined in the 10-year Collective Agreement MOA. This process was triggered as a result of the parties’ inability to reach a tentative agreement. There was a (90) day period of direct bargaining with Air Canada as is required but no agreement was forthcoming and therefore mediation was necessary. The Union and the Company both agreed at that time to postpone the mediation stage, so that we could deal with the immediate impacts of COVID-19 on our membership.
We are now in the process of resuming the mediation stage and will be meeting with Arbitrator Vince Ready next week for some preliminary discussions to see where the parties are at. We have also secured dates for mediation the week of November 7th and will book more dates as required. If the parties are unable to reach a mediated tentative agreement, then either party may refer a maximum of 10 items in dispute to interest arbitration.
We also wish to remind members that if interest arbitration takes place, there is a requirement for cost neutrality for Air Canada Mainline and Air Canada Rouge, except for certain items which could result in an increase in cost for Air Canada Rouge. Please review the MOA which can be found in the front pages of the Collective Agreement, or by clicking HERE, for more information on the reopener process and limitation.
Your Bargaining Committee is fully committed to achieve some gains despite the restrictions of the language. We will update the membership again following our first week of mediation in November.
In solidarity,
Your ACCEX
