Since the beginning of January, Porter Airlines aircraft fuelers at Billy Bishop Airport in Toronto have been on strike over safer working conditions and a living wage. The 22 fuelers formed a union as the Canadian Office of Professional Employees Union (COPE) Local 343 in August 2012 after they suffered years of continued understaffing, high turnover rates, and serious injuries on the job. Over the last three months the employer, Porter Airlines Inc., has put forward a relentless and stubborn attack on the unionized workers, refusing to pay them anything less than poverty wages and even neglecting health and safety concerns. This is a circumstance far too familiar for workers across this country today, as companies increasingly strategize to cut costs by all means necessary in order to maintain their profits.
Porter has refused to bargain honestly with the workers. Porter’s final contractual offer to the union only offered a shameful $0.25/hour raise for those without a DZ licence (for small truck-driving), no wage increase for those with a DZ license, and the provision of fuel-resistant gloves and coveralls. In addition, Porter has attempted to crush the union by hiring scabs, enabling their operations to continue, and has deceptively only begun to provide its scabs with this protective gear, as if to suggest that the safety issues faced by its workforce have been resolved.
In the words of the unionized workers from dontflyporter.com:
“We formed a union last year because Porter has a history of sloppy health and safety practices. We did not have proper protective gear and we were dangerously understaffed. Jet fuel seeped through our gloves and one new father broke both his wrists after falling from a plane. He was fuelling a float plane by himself, a job that safely requires two. We want to make improvements to the workplace so that it’s not a revolving door of workers, constantly needing to train new staff. When you don’t even have access to a washroom at the fuel farm, or work 9 hours without a lunch break, people get fed up and leave.”
Porter Airlines workers are also some of the lowest paid in the industry, at a starting wage of $12 per hour. Toronto is one of Canada’s most expensive cities, where a full time living wage far exceeds the poverty wages given. The minuscule hourly increase of $0.25 that was in Porter’s final contract offer is more than just an insult — it is a direct message against the workers. Porter has declined all other offers from its workers to negotiate since the strike began.
It is very obvious that Porter is not hurting for cash and can afford to pay their workers a decent wage. Porter Airlines was able to add an additional daily flight to Windsor beginning in mid-April. Furthermore, it has reached a conditional agreement to purchase up to 30 new CS100 jets from Bombardier, beginning in 2016. This does not sound like a company that can only afford to offer its employees an extra quarter per hour.
Although the strike by Porter workers may not involve a large number of workers, it is showing the working class as a whole the mutual interests that exist between the bosses and the state. During negotiations, Porter and the Toronto Port Authority (the operator of the downtown airport and an agency operated by the federal, Ontario, and Toronto municipal governments) sought to prevent Porter workers from picketing and leafletting in front of the airport. Scandalously, the airline and the port authority even had workers arrested and charged for handing out leaflets!
Porter subsequently sought an additional court injunction banning picketing, but the courts only granted a partial restriction. Striking workers are now able to leaflet and hand out fliers at the ferry terminal which takes travellers to the airport on the Toronto Islands.
After being frustrated that they could not get their way, Porter Airlines recently threw a $4-million libel lawsuit over the union’s @PorterStrike Twitter account. The rationale put forward by Porter is that a tweet sent out by the union was “defamatory”. It is hard to see how the union could defame a company that only offers a $0.25 per hour wage increase, seeks to have its workers arrested, and then throws a $4-million lawsuit on a union representing 22 workers!
The anger felt by the striking workers is only magnified when one imagines the amount of money Porter has spent on trying to sway public attention in their favour and promoting misinformation. When speaking to the Globe and Mail, Glen Wheeler of COPE said, “I would say that based on the number of lawyers from the other side that we have dealt with, they have spent several times more money on lawyers than it would cost to pay for the modest [hourly wage] increases requested by these 22 fuel handlers.”
According to activists and the unionized workers involved, there is apparently more to this dirty negotiation game on part of the authorities. For almost an entire week, the Toronto Port Authority’s lawyers were circulating a draft of an injunction, a version that they wanted to obtain, as if it were already a fact. This was a tactic to destroy the morale of the workers and a move that they hoped would divide them.
And, where has the federal government been in all of this? Last year, the Tories had no qualms in interfering in one labour dispute after another — examples included Canada Post, Air Canada, and Canadian Pacific Rail. However, where have the Conservatives been in forcing Porter to honestly bargain with its workers? It is clear that the federal government will only ever intercede if it is in the interest of the bosses and ruling class.
How do the workers win?
Unions across this country cannot allow companies like Porter to ignore workers in any province or city. Supporters and other trade unionists have heeded the call of the Porter workers to join them in solidarity, and this has helped to temporarily quell the police presence that Porter has used to overwhelm the strikers. But this is only a glimpse of the potential that workers and their unions have in this country.
Throughout the last few months we have witnessed methods that were aimed at unfairly destroying the strike. We will see much more illegitimate efforts on the behalf of the enemies of the workers, in the coming months. The 22 workers, standing proudly in the dead of winter next to blustery Lake Ontario represent an unconditional fight for a better life. They have not accepted the despicable poverty wages that were offered to them. They have been a prime example of the type of grit and defiance that is necessary in the face of unjust tactics. They are not just fighting for themselves but for the rights of all working people.
The rest of the labour movement needs to take up the cause of the Porter workers, widely publicizing their struggle and calling for a boycott of Porter Airlines until the company provides its workers with a decent wage and safe working conditions. An attack on one is an attack on us all! If Porter workers are successful, this would send an important message to all Canadian bosses that workers will no longer tolerate subhuman conditions in the name of corporate profits.
