WestJet is the company that grew and prospered with its employees, until they no longer mattered.

In 1996 WestJet was created as a new Ultra Low Cost Carrier (ULCC) airline to serve passengers in Calgary, Edmonton, Kelowna, Vancouver and Winnipeg. Its growth would see the company add additional routes to Regina, Saskatoon and Victoria by year’s end. In 2000, WestJet was already expanding to Hamilton, Ottawa and Moncton.

It was a scrappy start up that shook up the industry and treated its employees as owners and family who shared in the success – a recognition that the employees were instrumental in the success of this new airline.

In the past few years as WestJet explored the idea of selling the company, it was also doing what it did best – launching a new ULLC dubbed Swoop. The difference this time, however, was that employees would not be owners and would not be part of the success or the growth of the new venture. The work was outsourced to lower paid ground handling workers and profits that were once shared would stay in the hands of Swoop owners and managers, as well as multiple ground handling companies across the network.

The business roll out plan would mimic much of WestJet’s earlier success: flights within Western Canada to start, then expanding to central Canada with Hamilton as its hub and the eventual expansion to Eastern Canada. As WestJet vacations did before it, Swoop would soon expand to the sunshine and vacation destinations, taking some routes from its core business.

With Swoop doing more and more of the routes WestJet once did domestically, WestJet management took the mainline into International markets and the Business travel segment. The stock markets kept a close watch, and share prices saw some great fluctuations. WestJet’s undervalued shares created an opportunity for hedge fund Onex to buy in. We have mentioned in the past that Onex’s business model is to buy companies it sees as undervalued, create efficiencies (job cuts or outsourcing) and then sell off the company for a profit. It can be a difficult process that typically hurts those who built the company.

Without a union WestJet’s airport Customer Care team can only watch as their jobs continue to move down the counter. It leaves us wondering at what point WestJet stopped caring to share its success with the workers who built the company. In Unifor collective agreements we have language that protects workers from outsourcing by holding employers accountable when they lose their way from what matters: the employee who built their success.

WestJet shook up the airline industry and changed air travel in this country. That wasn’t done in a corporate tower. It was done on the floor of airports across this country by you and your co-workers. You have earned a right to be part of whatever comes next for WestJet as Onex continues to bring in its people and changes the company. You deserve a voice in the workplace at this pivotal time in the company’s history.

To find out more about how you can gain that voice and continue to be heard as the company you built evolves, contact one of your organizers.

All calls are confidential.

Ontario
Billy O'Neill, Unifor
[email protected] | 416-605-1443

Quebec
Ada Zampini, Unifor
[email protected] | 514-701-6227

Prairies
Bruce Fafard, Unifor
[email protected] | 587-341-0945

British Columbia
Simon Lau, Unifor
[email protected] | 778-928-9630

Atlantic
Patrick Murray, Unifor
[email protected] | 506-850-7996