This week, WestJet, together with TELUS, trialed Trusted Boarding, a touchless process using new biometric technology that they boast as the future of touchless and secure boarding for Canadian travellers.

Will More Jobs be Affected?

Airlines will continue looking at ways to reduce costs and improve their profits post-pandemic. WestJet, in particular, has already shed thousands of jobs under the guise of the pandemic, reducing their overall costs to perform Guest Service Agent and Customer Service Agent work across the network. Outsourcing was the first move to reduce costs at the airline by offloading expenses and responsibilities to third-party ground handling companies.

The pandemic has changed the airline sector, and the travelling public has become more open to technological change and a hands-free approach to travel. Workers need to have strong union representation as these new technologies come into play to ensure workers benefit from these changes and are not simply replaced by the change.

These technological changes were first referenced in June 2020 by WestJet’s departing CEO, Ed Sim’s. While announcing 3333 jobs cuts at the company, Sims mentioned future “Touch-free experience technology at the airports” and “New technology at contact centres to enhance response time and reduce queue times.”

References such as this by management typically mean more automation, demanding more efficiency from workers, or both. Your best protection is a union and a collective agreement addressing scope work, technological changes and language covering monitoring and measurement of your work.

Technological change is not unique to WestJet. Many Unifor collective agreements have specific language that addresses this issue directly. A union can negotiate language in a collective agreement that will allow new technology to complement workers rather than replace them.

At Air Canada, for instance, our collective agreement states that:

Technological Changes

“The Company shall provide the above representatives with materials pertaining to technological change which may be required to ensure that the fullest discussion will take place on such matters as retraining, filling of jobs created by technology, change of work methods, reorganization of work, change to the method of organization, etc., so as to ensure the change is implemented with the least possible disruption and with the maximum possible benefits to the Company and the employees.”

Monitoring and Measurement

The purpose of monitoring and measurement language in a collective agreement is to ensure that the measurement of workers’ performance is realistic and attainable.

Furthermore, it ensures that it is fairly and equitably applied to all workers. This helps all workers to succeed. Under a unionized environment, management and union representatives will meet regularly to evaluate whether these goals are met.

“It is agreed that a Joint Review Board consisting of management and designated representatives of the Union, will meet at the headquarters level as often as required: to review, on an ongoing basis, the utilization of monitoring and measurement equipment and processes currently being used or being considered for use in the future.” (Air Canada contract)

Scope work

Scope work explicitly and clearly defines the job description of each unionized position such as Customer Service Agents, Contact Centre Agents, Lead agents, etc. This ensures greater job security by preventing management from contracting out individual jobs. Any disputes can be legally grieved when workers are represented by a legal Union. Unifor has had much success in bargaining future work into scope. This is part of Unifor’s Good Jobs Revolution that tries to protect good union jobs from being done by third-party companies.

If you have friends that work at YYZ and YEG who have not yet signed a Unifor membership card, let them know that they can do this at join.unifor.org/federalcard

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