Why not? In the regional merger there was one company which was much more junior than the others (Air Nova). We were captains after a year or so pre merger. We have all been bumped to F/O positions and it now takes a minimum of 7 years for a left seat. Why is this so inconceivable at mainline? After all, it was a merger, not a takeover like Gerry Scwartz tried to do, which following some peoples logic here would have all OAC pilots at the bottom of the list had it not been for a technicality. Think about it.That being said, if Westjet buys Air Canada, should every Westjet Captain step aside because their DOH is 1996 or later?
Ex-CAI pilots plan boycott
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Gurundu the Rat
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tonysoprano
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Gurundu.
Sorry man. My funny bone keeps getting tickled on this forum. The biggest farce is to call AC/CAIL a merger. It's just so easy to call it that. But in reality, AC did what Schwartz was going to do. A takeover. A "merger" just had that warm fuzzy feeling so that's what we called it. It was anything but. And that's the point you miss or ignore. Yours was a merger. Ours was not. But the point is, wether merger or buyout, two groups came together and a solution that's fair is needed. This , I'm sure will set an example for the future. In Canada, this is bound to happen again.
Sorry man. My funny bone keeps getting tickled on this forum. The biggest farce is to call AC/CAIL a merger. It's just so easy to call it that. But in reality, AC did what Schwartz was going to do. A takeover. A "merger" just had that warm fuzzy feeling so that's what we called it. It was anything but. And that's the point you miss or ignore. Yours was a merger. Ours was not. But the point is, wether merger or buyout, two groups came together and a solution that's fair is needed. This , I'm sure will set an example for the future. In Canada, this is bound to happen again.
What Air Canada SHOULD have done was let Canadian run into bankruptcy, and let them fold, and cherry pick parts off Canadian, such as slots, routes, airplanes, etc. It could have avoided a whole lot of mess, such as timetable intergration issues, database intergration, employee intergration, and the absorbtion of the massive debt Canadian had... Then again, hindsight is always 20-20...
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circlingfor69
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centerstored
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Well that’s what any well run business would have done but unfortunately this is not Canadian political reality. You've forgotten where you live, in Canada we do things the gentler kinder way..ahh I sort of like it that way.WJflyer wrote:What Air Canada SHOULD have done was let Canadian run into bankruptcy, and let them fold, and cherry pick parts off Canadian, such as slots, routes, airplanes, etc. It could have avoided a whole lot of mess, such as timetable intergration issues, database intergration, employee intergration, and the absorbtion of the massive debt Canadian had... Then again, hindsight is always 20-20...
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Jaques Strappe
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It was made very clear that Canadian would not be allowed to fold like a cheap suit. Be it Gerry or Robert, the government did not care but AC had little choice in the matter.WJflyer wrote:What Air Canada SHOULD have done was let Canadian run into bankruptcy, and let them fold, and cherry pick parts off Canadian, such as slots, routes, airplanes, etc. It could have avoided a whole lot of mess, such as timetable intergration issues, database intergration, employee intergration, and the absorbtion of the massive debt Canadian had... Then again, hindsight is always 20-20...
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Gurundu the Rat
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oooOOOHHHhhhhhh! Ours was but not yours. How do you respond to that kind of thinking? You see CRA came with Canadian and was merged to the rest of what was at the time known as Air Canada Regional in much the same way as AC and CAI. So why not DOH? I think the Canadian guys paid their dues too. Of course that is just my uninformed opinion as I have nothing to do with it anyways. Hope everything works out.Yours was a merger. Ours was not.
"It was made very clear that Canadian would not be allowed to fold like a cheap suit. Be it Gerry or Robert, the government did not care but AC had little choice in the matter."
Yes, I do believe you have it right. The Liberal administration at the time was not going to let a major western founded and based airline go down the toilet. Remember the old Muldoon and the CF18 issue vs. Quebec and the west... well that stung him (Muldoon) bad and the old JC was all too aware. We all know that CAI was a mixture of CP, PWA Nordair, EPA, Quebecair and the like and in strict business sense it was doomed………
Yes, I do believe you have it right. The Liberal administration at the time was not going to let a major western founded and based airline go down the toilet. Remember the old Muldoon and the CF18 issue vs. Quebec and the west... well that stung him (Muldoon) bad and the old JC was all too aware. We all know that CAI was a mixture of CP, PWA Nordair, EPA, Quebecair and the like and in strict business sense it was doomed………
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grammar boy
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Jaques Strappe
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Exactly, but either way, should all the employees who contributed to the succes of Westjet be expected to step aside and hand over their positions to the employees of the failed airline? I doubt you will find too many willing to do that.grammar boy wrote:Maybe it will be the other way around...circlingfor69 wrote:Maybe someday AC will have the chance to do that to WJ.
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Canus Chinookus
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grammar boy
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Would you feel the same if WJ bought a failing company?Canus Chinookus wrote:AC bought CAIL and merged the 2 companies... bottom line. Bitch and whine all you want, but it wasn't a takeover, it was a merger, so IMHO the senority lists should have been treated as such. 1:1
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grammar boy
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I doubt it too. You guys have a gong-show of a problem there, and I doubt there will be a solution that makes everyone happy. Perhaps having both sides pissed is the only solution, unfortunately.Exactly, but either way, should all the employees who contributed to the succes of Westjet be expected to step aside and hand over their positions to the employees of the failed airline? I doubt you will find too many willing to do that.
Good luck.
Impossible. The Liberal Government and goofball Collenette made it absolutely clear that there would be a merger. The game was rigged. It was Schwartz with the deal that was set up with his friend Collenette, AMR and CAI or AC was going to have to do a deal. There was no option to let CAI die or struggle through CCAA and die - which would have been the sensible solution. As it was, under AC protection as a number company for a while, it almost died anyway a number of times. However it did survive..................WJflyer wrote:What Air Canada SHOULD have done was let Canadian run into bankruptcy, and let them fold, and cherry pick parts off Canadian, such as slots, routes, airplanes, etc. It could have avoided a whole lot of mess, such as timetable intergration issues, database intergration, employee intergration, and the absorbtion of the massive debt Canadian had... Then again, hindsight is always 20-20...
Ohhh, for chrissake, give up the DOH shit. There is no way that if there was a merger with AC and WJ that it would be DOH. The fair and reasonable solution that would be far from DOH, would be the same as the solution that should have applied to AC and CAI. IF the two companies are simliar in type, routes, etc, which AC and CDN were the relative position in the pre-mergered lists is the only fair solution. So WJ and AC would be similiar - maybe not exactly the same. The number one guy at WJ is not going to be a 340 captain. He might be well up there on the 320, though.Gurundu the Rat wrote:oooOOOHHHhhhhhh! Ours was but not yours. How do you respond to that kind of thinking? You see CRA came with Canadian and was merged to the rest of what was at the time known as Air Canada Regional in much the same way as AC and CAI. So why not DOH? I think the Canadian guys paid their dues too. Of course that is just my uninformed opinion as I have nothing to do with it anyways. Hope everything works out.Yours was a merger. Ours was not.
There is no way that the WJ guy would be DOH'd to an FO position or junior captain, because that would not be reasonable for someone that is high in relative position at a one type, "domestic" (north america more or less) carrier.
In effect that is what the CIRB said in their kicking out of Mitchnick in their Decision 183. They said, in effect, that like types and like positions should be integrated. There would be people on all types and positions that are out of seniority relatively speaking for working conditions, or not trained, whatever. So a like of similiar airlines with similiar types the simple and fair solution would be integration on the relative position on the respective seniority lists.
AGE is NOT a factor. Tough luck or better luck, depending on where you stand that each of the airlines had different synchronization on when they hired. AC did not really furlough until 1993. CDN furlough frequently, so DOH, is not years of service, so DOH is totally out the window in any case.
Gurundu, the regional merger didn't go quite as smoothly as you want everyone to believe. Don't forget there were all kinds of fences in place for the first few years that resulted in guys being laid off WAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY out of seniority ( I believe the worst case was a 7 yr F/O laid off while 3rd year guys continued to work) I had 4yrs in and was laid off for nearly 2 yrs while my friends that are considerably junior to me were still working. As well there were some pretty senior F/O's that were held back due to fences while guys junior to them held the left seat. Now that the initial period is over and the fences are gone things are starting to sort themselves out, but those 2 yrs of pay for the guys that were laid off, or the difference in pay from left to right seat for that guys that were held back, is gone forever. Funny I now have guys that are junior to me that make more money than I do......
I think the stupidest part of these endless discussions is the assumption it was the ex Canadian pilots fault they were in the situation they were in and thus should be delighted and cringing in gratitude to go to the bottom of the list. They were in exactly the same position as the AC pilots - prisoners of the whims of the Government, which is NOT their fault. Relative seniority based on a single list as if both airlines had always been one was the only logical way to do it and the constant infighting between the pilot groups has allow the Liberals to scurry away from the problem they created, especially with their politically motivated fiddling with route allocations which was used to force the merger in the end.
If the Canadian Government had allowed 49pc foreign ownership then American (at the time) could have taken a bigger stake - it may have all come to tears at that stage but nobody knows that because the Liberals refused to allow it. It's ironic we're discussing this again just as the Libs are allowing higher foreign ownership, finally.
If the Canadian Government had allowed 49pc foreign ownership then American (at the time) could have taken a bigger stake - it may have all come to tears at that stage but nobody knows that because the Liberals refused to allow it. It's ironic we're discussing this again just as the Libs are allowing higher foreign ownership, finally.
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Gurundu the Rat
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bcflyer, There is no perfect way to merge a bunch of companys, but I also think the regionals got it right. I think a 7 year f/o at air BC would have gotten laid off anyways after 9/11 had there not been a merger. Fences made the transition gradual and now the pieces have fallen into place. I do however agree that your 2 years of pay should be restored. You can now bid captain in YYZ or YUL whereas before a left seat was still 10 years away.
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Gurundu the Rat
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Nothing very scientific but I just figured that the bottom 10% in each separate company would have been laid off. Maybe not but probably close. Anyways things are looking up now. I heard the 8 new machines were not accounted for on the last bid and January will be another high growth bid.
Cheers
Cheers
If someone had walked into a room full of Canadian Airlines employee's prior to Air Canada buying them and said "I would like to offer everyone a job with more stability and a 20% pay increase but back of the list" all of them would have put up their hands. I liked Canadian, wanted to work for Canadian and have a degree because of it but give it a rest. OCP didn't like the first BINDING ARBITRATION so they somehow got it reopened and changed. Now those same people are pissed because the OAC are doing exactly what they did.
If there are any OCP pilots in here, can you shed some light on how you "merged" with the airlines you bought previous? If you didn't give those people date of hire then why do you expect it now?
If someone came to my company and bumped me back all while wearing parts of their old uniform and a pin saying better dead then red I'd be a little upset. As someone who lost their job at Canada 3000 please take my word for it, getting a pay raise and the opportunity to fly the same or better equipment but being bumped back a few numbers is a lot better then standing in the unemployment line wondering what just happened!! The only thing your pilots licence is good for when unemployed is telling stories while you are flipping burgers.
If there are any OCP pilots in here, can you shed some light on how you "merged" with the airlines you bought previous? If you didn't give those people date of hire then why do you expect it now?
If someone came to my company and bumped me back all while wearing parts of their old uniform and a pin saying better dead then red I'd be a little upset. As someone who lost their job at Canada 3000 please take my word for it, getting a pay raise and the opportunity to fly the same or better equipment but being bumped back a few numbers is a lot better then standing in the unemployment line wondering what just happened!! The only thing your pilots licence is good for when unemployed is telling stories while you are flipping burgers.
I can't speak for every AC pilot, but I can certainly express my view I guess. I do not expect OCP pilots to be worse off. I certainly don't want them to damage me in any way, nor the pre-merger AC pilots. No one hired after the declared merger in 1999 or even if you use Jan 2000 when anyone hired was going to be at the merged, should jump ahead of anyone else, nor be reshuffled into anything other than DOH of hiring post-merger.whipline wrote:If someone had walked into a room full of Canadian Airlines employee's prior to Air Canada buying them and said "I would like to offer everyone a job with more stability and a 20% pay increase but back of the list" all of them would have put up their hands. I liked Canadian, wanted to work for Canadian and have a degree because of it but give it a rest. OCP didn't like the first BINDING ARBITRATION so they somehow got it reopened and changed. Now those same people are pissed because the OAC are doing exactly what they did.
If there are any OCP pilots in here, can you shed some light on how you "merged" with the airlines you bought previous? If you didn't give those people date of hire then why do you expect it now?
If someone came to my company and bumped me back all while wearing parts of their old uniform and a pin saying better dead then red I'd be a little upset. As someone who lost their job at Canada 3000 please take my word for it, getting a pay raise and the opportunity to fly the same or better equipment but being bumped back a few numbers is a lot better then standing in the unemployment line wondering what just happened!! The only thing your pilots licence is good for when unemployed is telling stories while you are flipping burgers.
The only fair solution is a percentile of original list. The principle is so simple and easily implemented with the bottom people most likely to be furloughed, and the top guys from either airline still in the top. The likes to likes if Decision 183 basically said that, but people bog down into the micro-managing of individual seniority numbers. That was never the intent. Even the likes-to-likes of Decision 183 is cumbersome in comparison to the simplicity of taking the pre-merger seniority lists and determining to however many decimal places necessary, a unique percentile number for everyone (very likely), and letting a computer sort the list - DUH. No one is severely damaged, because in the relative ladder of the original or the merged company, you come out in the same relative position at the bigger one, with more options all around - certainly for the OCP types.
If we could get everyone on board a simple, transparent, crisp solution we might be able to get on with trying to enjoy flying once again.
