Arbitration Update for 2011 Terminations

In March 2012, the Toronto Airport Screeners chose the IAMAW as their bargaining agent and inherited close to 300 unsettled CAWU grievances.  These grievors were in a situation where they paid the dues but received no representation, especially the 30 screeners terminated in 2010/2011!

With legal action and help from the Labour Board the IAM eventually received the outstanding files from the CAWU consisting mostly of correspondence between lawyers and other parties.  It was not enough information to resolve the grievances.

The IAM started to contact screeners and managed to get some of the missing information to start resolving grievances with GARDA. Ten terminations were successfully resolved early on.  The rest of the terminations proceeded to Arbitration.

The Arbitration process was lengthy as the CAWU agreement language was written poorly. This meant that each grievance would have taken a long time to schedule and present to an Arbitrator.  Therefore the IAM immediately negotiated a simpler Arbitration process with Garda so that members’ issues could be resolved in a faster and more efficient manner with one Arbitrator.

The remaining 21 termination grievances were scheduled for arbitration first and because of the legal issues, the IAM hired lawyers to assist and prepared the cases.

Fortunately, four screeners were returned to work early in the arbitration process. The rest of the grievances were presented to the arbitrator.  In the end, the IAM convinced GARDA to withdraw all but three grievances and most were returned back to work.  In two of these, the Arbitrator has ruled that the company had just cause to terminate them.  One grievance remains to be arbitrated.

The IAMAW is very proud and happy to be successful in bringing the screeners back to work and the compensation for their suffering will be resolved shortly with the Arbitrator.  This should have been accomplished long ago by the CAWU.

The IAM welcomes these screeners back to work and hopes all screeners welcome and embrace them back into the family.

In Solidarity,

Carlos DaCosta
Airline Coordinator, IAWAW