This Onex WestJet new posting for Senior Advisor, Workforce Planning is not routine hiring. The language and timing strongly suggest WestJet is building internal capacity to manage cuts, restructuring, outsourcing decisions, and post-merger consolidation in a more systematic way.

1. This Is About Reducing Headcount and Reshaping Work

Key phrases to pay attention to include:

“Aligning workforce supply and demand with business, financial, and operational goals”
“Run rate management”
“Scenario planning methodologies”
“Organizational design and optimal structure”

These are not growth terms. These are cost-control terms. Workforce planning at this level is about deciding how many people the company thinks it needs, where, doing what, and at what cost.

2. Explicit Focus on Corporate and Indirect Roles

The posting specifically targets the indirect corporate workforce. This lines up directly with what leadership has already said publicly:

Nothing is off the table
Budgets are being finalized
Labour costs are outpacing inflation

This role exists to give leadership the data and structure to justify reductions.

3. Built to Enable Restructuring and Outsourcing

Several responsibilities stand out as red flags:

“Define workforce segmentation and employment models,” including full-time, term, and contractor categories

This is often groundwork for shifting work from employees to contractors or external vendors, one of the fastest ways to lower labour costs.

The requirement to partner with Procurement is especially telling. This is where outsourcing decisions live.

4. Explicit Mandate for Organizational Change and Integration

The posting openly states

“Lead workforce planning components of post-merger integration and organizational restructuring”

Companies do not create roles with this mandate unless significant job impacts are expected.

5. Technology to Accelerate Decisions

The role leads workforce planning through the Dayforce HCM implementation with advanced forecasting and scenario modeling.

That enables:

More precise tracking of headcount
Faster modeling of layoffs or reductions
Easier movement of work between teams and vendors
Cleaner data to support executive decisions

Tools like this are typically rolled out before or during restructures, not after.

6. Timing Matters

This posting appears immediately after leadership said:

A quarter of the business is gone
Next year will be flat or worse
Nothing is off the table
Budgets are being finalized

That timing is not accidental. This role exists to support those decisions.

What This Means for Workers

WestJet is not hiring this role to protect jobs. It is hiring it to manage change at scale. In plain terms, that means deciding:

Which jobs stay
Which jobs go
Which work moves
Which roles are outsourced
Which teams are redesigned

Workers without a union collective agreement have no say in how those choices are made.

We Have Lived This Before

We have lived this already. Unifor warned airport workers that cuts and outsourcing were coming. Too many trusted that it would not affect them, and when the decisions came it was already done. Tier 2 and Tier 3 bases were lost, along with GSA and TAC. Waiting cost people their jobs.

Why This Reinforces the Urgency to Organize

This posting reinforces everything workers heard in the livestream:

Cuts are being planned.
Outsourcing remains a tool.
Labour costs are being scrutinized.
Restructuring is being systematized.

Once workforce plans are finalized, workers are informed, not consulted.

The only way workers change this dynamic is by having a legally binding union agreement that requires bargaining over change, limits outsourcing, and provides protection when restructuring happens.

Billy O'Neill
Unifor National Representative, Organizing
416.605.1443
billy.oneill@unifor.org

Lucy Alessio
Unifor National Coordinator, Organizing
416.998.3189
lucy.alessio@unifor.org

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