As many of you may be aware, there have been troubling concerns relating to how you are paid. This has had a profound impact on many members who continue to struggle with the cost-of-living increases and skyrocketing inflation. In particular, we are aware that inaccurate and inconsistent calculations being done by the company significantly impacts the take home pay of our colleagues. We have had so many reported incidents that we are now left with no choice but to raise awareness of this unprecedented situation. We have seen and continue to see a loss of integrity in the payroll, meal expense, vacation calculation, minimum wage and general expense systems to name just a few.
To address these issues, we have set up an email address where you can send us information about your particular situation and/or can copy us on any pay correspondence with the Company. That email address is pay@accomponent.ca.
The year started off with multiple concerns raised from by members concerning the Vacation Clawback fiasco, where the company advised hundreds of members that they took too many vacation days in the 2022-2023 calendar year. Bulletins on this subject are attached below:
As noted above, we have received multiple reported issues regarding your pay. Some of the specific concerns we have been looking into are:
- Members not being paid minimum wage for training credits.
- Members being notified on pay statements to claim expenses for flights the system is aware expenses are to be paid on.
- Our special assignment members vacation/stat days not being reconciled correctly.
- Our Special assignment members not being credited stat day towards their vacation.
- Violation of L26. The Company has failed to dedicate a resource to process pay claims in a timely fashion.
- Several Rouge Flow Through Members wage rates were erroneously recalculated, stepped down and then corrected. This resulted in an unwarranted pay loss. This is especially egregious for our Rouge colleagues who have to endure a wage freeze when they flow over. The recoupment of their pay was accompanied by an explanation that simply did not include how and why the company determined them to be at the wrong pay scale.
- Special Dinner allowance not being paid as per the CA unless it was claimed.
Your Union has had discussions on many of these items with the employer and raised these issues to many representatives within the management team. Regardless of our repeated concerns about the integrity of their systems, the consistent response we received was hollow assertions that “Pay is important to us all”. Despite the employer’s assurances that the concerns were remedied, we continued to see similar issues recur time and time again. We simply have not had these pay matters addressed to our satisfaction, and more so to the satisfaction of our members.
The responsibility for paying their employees properly lies squarely on the shoulders of the employer however we are putting in numerous hours of unpaid work on a daily basis to address these ongoing pay issues of our members. It is our belief that with an employer as sophisticated as Air Canada, which has won numerous awards, we should not have to fight for the basic minimum rights enshrined in the Canada Labour Code and entitlements in the collective agreement. Your Union can not and will not sit idly by and give this employer unlimited time to rectify these issues. We do not feel that meaningful efforts have been made or that our concerns have been heard. Essentially, we ask them to put themselves in the shoes of our members to understand how these actions have adversely and profoundly impaired their trust in this company to act fairly and take pay issues seriously.
We strongly advise you to review your pay, your pay rate, expenses, and any premiums you are entitled. Please continue to CC us in your communications with the employer on ALL pay issues. The extent of this is unknown, but we do know its far too large to allow the discussions to continue without our strong oversight and adherence to the Collective Agreement entitlements and Canada Labour Code rights.
In Solidarity,
Wesley Lesosky
President, Air Canada Component of CUPE
