Let’s stand up for airport workers – sign the letter to GTAA leaders!
Open Letter to GTAA President and Chief Executive Officer Howard Eng and GTAA Board Chairman David Wilson
As leaders of GTAA, you have a mandate to protect the public interest and ensure the GTAA is making a positive economic contribution to local communities. Certain employer practices — like contract flipping — turn decent jobs into low-wage, precarious employment and harm the economic prospects of the more than 40,000 GTAA workers who reside in nearby communities.
We are therefore calling on you to implement a decent work agenda where all contracts (collective bargaining, individual or sub-contracted) contain the following provisions:
- That all airport labour is compensated at a rate of at least $15 an hour, and that programs such as volunteering and internships that take advantage of unpaid labour, are ended;
- That all airport workers receive seven paid sick days;
- That part-time, temporary, casual and contract workers receive wages and benefits not less than the wages and benefits of their full-time, permanent and directly-hired counterparts;
- That all airport workers be provided with enough hours to live on;
- That fair scheduling be implemented with adequate advance notice of all shifts;
- That the airports authority and airlines stop downloading responsibility for decent wages and working conditions onto sub-contractors, temp agencies, and individual workers;
- That workers affected by sub-contracting are hired back at a rate in keeping with or better than their previous rate of pay, seniority and benefits in the event of a new sub-contractor; and
- That where workers have formed unions, these collective bargaining contracts and the workers affected continue on as if the contract had not changed, even when the sub-contractor changes.
We further call on the airport authority to place a moratorium on the issuance of new Licenses to Operate and to end the practice of contract flipping which drives down wages and benefits and creates permanent insecurity for workers.