Air Canada wants flight attendants to double as ticket agents at Zip ALLAN SWIFT Canadian Press Sunday, July 07, 2002 MONTREAL (CP) - Air Canada is playing tough in contract negotiations with its 8,500 flight attendants as the struggling airline tries to convert a large portion of its domestic network into the low-cost concept. The flight attendants' union is outraged that Air Canada is hiring attendants for the new low-cost carrier Zip who will double as passenger agents and reservation agents - positions that are historically separate. "Zip is a huge issue for us," Pamela Sachs, president of the Air Canada local of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said in an interview. "Robert Milton (Air Canada's chief executive) has stated Zip will go right across Canada," said Sachs, and "the work that Zip will do is the work that Air Canada flight attendants do today." Zip, Air Canada's new western-based discount airline, is to begin service late this summer. It will complement Tango, a low-cost brand which has expanded rapidly since it began in November. As part of its drive to reduce costs, Calgary-based Zip will blend flight attendants with two other employee groupings - passenger agents and reservation agents, calling them customer contact employees. This type of flexibility is anathema to union leaders, and in this case would pit one major union against another, since the Canadian Auto Workers represent the passenger and reservation agents. Zip president Stephen Smith says the airline, created to compete with successful non-union WestJet Airlines of Calgary, needs a low-cost structure so it can offer the low fares travellers are demanding. "Historically there's been a black line drawn between flight attendants and passenger agents," said Smith. "We believe that the flight attendant, passenger agent and reservation agent all do very similar jobs. They're all in contact with the airline's customers." Smith said Zip is negotiating with the union, but he admitted that many of the initial 150 customer contact employees have already been hired. "At Christmas time, your calls go way down but your operations on aircraft and at the airport go way up, so we'd like the ability to be able to move people from the call centre to the airport to help out." Milton said recently that the discount business could account for 40 per cent of Air Canada's domestic operations by the summer of next year. Analyst Jacques Kavafian believes that half of all North American flying, including cross-border, will become low-cost as opposed to full-service. "The market is clearly going into this no-frills segment, whether the unions like it or not," said Kavafian, with Octagon Capital. "Labour is the largest expense item; it's natural that you try to reduce that as well. I mean, there's just so much savings in taking the sandwich out and replacing it with pretzels." The contract covering Air Canada flight attendants ran out last year, except for those who formerly worked at Canadian Airlines, whose contract is in force until 2004. After the Canada Labour Relations Board allowed Air Canada to force the two into one bargaining unit, the board is now weighing a request by the union that would allow it to call a strike vote. Until then, the union is deprived of its only bargaining leverage. Besides the blended positions at Zip, Sachs said Air Canada management is demanding the right to assign the head attendant on a flight, and decide who works business class and on the Jetz sports charter planes. Currently those positions are determined by seniority, said Sachs. "It's really frustrating, because the company is telling the world they have financial troubles and their proposed solution is to come to the bargaining table with a list of concessions for the flight attendant group, the third-lowest paid group in the industry." The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site: Roj (Roger James) *************************************************** escape email mailto:ejames@escape.ca Trinbago site: http://www.tntisland.com CBC Website http://www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ The Trinbago Site of the Week: (Solo) http://www.solobev.com/ (Solo Beverages) courtesy of Roj Trinbago Website & TnT Web Directory Roj's Trinbago Website: http://www.tntisland.com TnT Web Directory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************