News
Cascade seeks injunction against striking workers
June 11, 2014, Abbotsford, B.C. - Abbotsford-based Cascade Aerospace will be in Vancouver Supreme Court Wednesday morning arguing for an injunction against the union that represents 440 of its technicians, clerks and office staff over picketing in their strike against the company.
June 11, 2014 By The Vancouver Sun
In its application for the injunction, the company said union pickets
with Unifor Local 114 have “wrongfully and without lawful excuse”
entered Cascade’s driveway, congregated in large numbers and obstructed
access to Cascade’s hangars at the Abbotsford airport.
In the
application, Cascade says it has continued operations to “meet its
contractual obligations to customers,” and picketing activities have
interfered with that business.
Unifor area director Gavin
McGarrigle characterized the union’s picketing as “peaceful,” and
countered that Cascade has brought in replacement workers to work on a
plane operated by the charter airline CanJet. Both Cascade and CanJet
are subsidiaries of the Halifax-based aviation and technology company
IMP Group.
Bringing the workers in “is not going to make it easier to get a deal, it’s going to make it harder,” McGarrigle said.
Unifor
Local 114 went on strike June 4 over company proposals that would have
established a two-tier structure for benefits and pension entitlements,
McGarrigle said.
The company’s last offer to its unionized
employees included wage increases “and operational changes that will
allow us to compete for aircraft maintenance, overhaul and modification
work in increasingly competitive domestic and international markets,”
Benjamin Boehm, Cascade’s executive vice-president and chief operating
officer, said in a news release.
McGarrigle said “two-tiering is the most divisive thing you can do to a workforce.”
Cascade,
which was bought by IMP Group in 2012, is a division of its Aerospace
& Defence subsidiary and one of two heavy maintenance centres in the
world certified by Lockheed Martin to overhaul the C-130 Hercules cargo
plane. It is the primary maintenance contractor for the Royal Canadian
Air Force Hercules fleet.
