Air Canada ground staff reject contract deal
Air Canada's baggage handlers, ground crews and maintenance workers on Wednesday rejected a tentative deal signed earlier this month with Canada's biggest airline, shortly after its dispatchers ratified a new contract.
Workers represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers voted nearly two thirds — 65.6 per cent — to reject an earlier deal that gave them wage, benefit and other increases.
That vote came a day after the carrier said its 74 flight dispatchers based near Toronto Pearson International Airport had backed the new contract that expires in 2016.
A spokesman for IAMAW — Air Canada's largest union with about 8,600 members — said the workers also gave the union 78 per cent support to call a strike if a new deal can't be reached.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/02/22/air-canada-labour-machinists-baggage-handlers.html
