Seniority issue stalls Air Canada pilots' vote CTV.ca News Staff Canada's largest airline has run into turbulence in its flight from the edge of bankruptcy. Air Canada's pilots union has told its members to stop and think before voting on a tentative contract seen as essential to the troubled carrier's restructuring. The Air Canada Pilots Association (ACPA) is upset with what it calls an "unjust" arbitrator's ruling that gives pilots from the old Canadian Airlines more seniority. It will see more than 2,000 Air Canada pilots pushed down the seniority list by an average of 176 spots. About 1,100 former Canadian pilots will move up by 347 positions. Air Canada pilots are livid. "They are having difficulty separating the issues of seniority from that of the tentative agreement," union spokesperson Capt. Dave Coles told Canada AM Tuesday. "If they just go in and vote "no", it could very well just be a vote against the seniority arbitration." In a statement released Monday ACPA asked its members to "withhold" their vote on the collective agreement until the arbitrator's ruling is reviewed. Since Air Canada's takeover of Canadian four years ago, unions and the Montreal-based airline have been struggling to integrate seniority lists from the two airlines. The issue is important to pilots because the seniority list determines which planes they fly, their salary scales, their working conditions -- and who will lose their jobs as Air Canada restructures. Air Canada pilots are concerned they will unfairly bear most of the pain of restructuring Coles said. "Canadian Airlines and Air Canada came in as two very different airlines. Canadian was very stagnant through the 1990s, so what took an Air Canada pilot 5 years to attain, took a Canadian pilot 15 years to attain." According to Coles, such a reshuffling of the seniority list has been "devastating" to the original Air Canada pilots and could sink the tentative contract. The deal between Air Canada pilots and the insolvent carrier is expected to cut $250 million in annual costs from the company's operational expenses and cost the union more than 300 jobs. The pilots' union began voting on the tentative contract, which also cuts pilots' pay by 15 per cent, Friday. Voting on the six-year agreement was to have ended June 30 -- Air Canada's target date to complete labour negotiations. But Coles said the union is advising pilots to hold off on voting until Thursday, when his committee takes its request to review the arbitration before Canada Industrial Relations Board chairman Paul Lordon. Coles hopes the meeting will help "isolate the issues so that the pilots can know what they're voting on and not vote with anger." The contract is considered key to Air Canada's survival. The airline needs to reach agreements with all nine of its unions in order to reduce labour costs by $1.1 billion per year. About one-third of Air Canada's 3,100 mainline pilots came from Canadian Airlines after the airline was taken over in 1999. Also Monday, Mr. Justice James Farley of Ontario Superior Court approved an extension of Air Canada's court protection order. He extended the original order granted on April 1 for another three months until Sept. 30. With reports from CTV's Janis Mackey Frayer and Canadian Press *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Mas Site: www.tntisland.com/tntrecords/mas2003/ Site of the Week: http://www.carib-link.net/naparima/naps.html TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************