The Canada Industrial Relations Board will examine the application and if it is approved, will conduct a secret ballot vote of all eligible pilots.Matthew Sherwood/The Globe and Mail
A group of WestJet Airlines Ltd. pilots has applied to be certified as a union at the staunchly non-union carrier.
The application to the Canada Industrial Relations Board required that more than 40 per cent of WestJet's 1,200 pilots signed membership cards, the WestJet Professional Pilots Association said in a posting on its website, adding that the group "comfortably" exceeds that level.
The board will examine the application and if it is approved, will conduct a secret ballot vote of all eligible pilots. "This will be the first time in WestJet's 19-plus-year history that our pilots will have an independent third party run a completely confidential vote," the website posting said.
WestJet has grown as a low-cost, non-union airline to compete with unionized Air Canada domestically, on Canada-U.S. routes and sun destinations and, in recent years, launched trans-Atlantic service that it will expand further in 2016. That growth has cut dramatically into the market share held by Air Canada, which has responded by establishing its low-cost Rouge network, which offers compensation schemes designed to compete with WestJet and other low-cost carriers.
"We are disappointed that the WestJet Professional Pilots Association has applied for certification," WestJet spokesman Robert Palmer said in a statement.
The airline supports its Pro-Active Communications Team, known as PACT, which fosters mutual respect and collaboration and "as results would demonstrate, has served the airline and our people well," Mr. Palmer said.
The pilots association said in earlier bulletins on its website that a unionized group would be able to finance and support health and retirement benefit programs for pilots.
"It is everyone's interest – management, employees and the flying public – that the pilots are consulted, listened to and taken seriously on important issues directly affecting how we do our jobs," one bulletin said. "Certification will give us that protected direct link to senior management."
The group said that if it is certified, it will hold elections for permanent representatives to replace the current interim leadership.
Calgary-based WestJet cites the potential of unionization of its employees as a risk factor in its annual information form filed with securities regulators.
"We have a non-union work force that we believe gives us a competitive advantage and helps foster our unique corporate culture," the filing said.
That culture includes share ownership and references to employees as WestJetters.
"Depending on the ability to reach a collective agreement and the final terms of that agreement, we could be subject to potential disruption in scheduled service, changes to our current work rules and processes and increases to our labour costs," the annual information form added.
A direct comparison between what pilots are paid at WestJet and how their unionized counterparts at Air Canada are paid is difficult, given that their compensation schemes are different and they fly different planes.
But junior pilots at Air Canada start at about $50,000 a year and their salaries can rise to more than $250,000 annually if they rise through the ranks to become captains of the airline's wide-bodied Boeing 777 planes, which carry passengers on many of Air Canada's international routes.
Air Canada reached a 10-year deal with pilots last October that calls for annual wage increases of 2 per cent, but also gives pilots higher wages as they move from smaller planes to larger aircraft and from co-pilots' chairs to pilots' seats. WestJet's compensation tends to tilt more toward bonuses and profit sharing.