Good afternoon. My name is Wes Lesosky. I am a professional flight attendant and the president of the Air Canada component of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. I represent just shy of 10,000 flight attendants at Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge.
I am also the president of CUPE's airline division, which represents 15,000 flight attendants at nine different Canadian airlines across Canada.
I am very grateful to the committee for the invitation to appear today and speak about the impacts of the pandemic on workers like me in Canada. Flights attendants, as you know, were some of the first workers in Canada to confront COVID-19 in the workplace.
Even as many were flying repatriation flights to bring Canadians home from around the globe, flight attendants were losing their jobs by the thousands. Unlike many other sectors of the economy, by and large those jobs have not come back since the onset of the pandemic last March. In fact, we have hundreds more being laid off next week. Around three-quarters of our members are currently laid off, and wondering if there will even be an industry to return to once the pandemic dust settles. Needless to say, it has been a difficult year for us.
To be quite frank, it has been made much more difficult than it needed to be by the federal government, which has repeatedly ignored our calls for help, and rarely, if ever, consulted labour representatives on major decisions affecting our members, their health and safety, and their livelihoods.
On behalf of our 15,000 members, I would like to propose the following for the committee's consideration.
Number one, the government needs to better protect the rights of airline workers to a healthy and safe work environment, including the right to refuse unsafe work. Our members went through hell in the early months of the pandemic, and we had a regulator that refused to act when we tried to push for protections to make our jobs safer. The government needs to work with us, not against us, to make flying safer for cabin crew and the flying public.
Number two, it's time for the government to take a serious look at implementing pre-boarding rapid testing at airports. For months, we have been calling on the federal government to implement rapid testing to make flying safer for both cabin crew and the public, without harming the industry. Instead, the government hastily imposed its pre-travel test policy earlier this month, which the numbers show does nothing to increase safety and which led to thousands more jobs lost overnight.
Number three, our industry needs targeted financial aid from the federal government that prioritizes protecting workers and their families from the impacts of the virus. We are perplexed that Canada remains the only G7 country without a comprehensive aid package for the airline industry. Since April we've been hearing that financial aid for the industry is just around the corner to help protect tens of thousands of jobs, and yet each time we think the government may act, we're met with more delay and disappointment.
Number four, the government must fix well-intentioned programs like the Canada emergency wage subsidy so they cannot be abused by employers. The program was established to help employers avoid sweeping layoffs by covering 75% of the payroll, but instead of honouring the intent of the program, Air Canada, for example, has laid off the vast majority of its workforce, including about 8,000 of my members, but it is still utilizing the wage subsidy for active employees. The federal government has, since day one, resisted putting any conditions on this program to prevent companies from taking the money while leaving their workers behind.
Canada is a very large place. More than almost any other country, we rely on a safe and dependable air transportation network to connect our communities and keep our economy strong. Just like roads, highways, ferries and rail networks, Canada needs a strong airline industry. Ours is an industry where safety is paramount. We should all be concerned with the long-term implications of losing tens of thousands of flight attendants, pilots, air traffic controllers, aircraft technicians and other workers who have years of training and expertise in keeping the public safe while they are 30,000 feet in the air, all because the federal government decides not to act while it has the chance.
Our members answered the federal government's call for help when COVID-19 struck. Now we ask that you answer theirs.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.