Air Canada plans to lay off at least 20,000 employees as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the airline industry.
Effective June 7, the layoffs will affect more than half of the company’s 38,000 employees, the airline said.
In a memo sent to all employees on Friday that was obtained by CBC News, Air Canada said the move comes after a “fundamental review of what we must do to successfully emerge from this crisis and begin rebuilding our airline.”
The airline said it is currently flying at about five per cent of the capacity it flew last year and hopes to ramp up to 25 per cent later in the year if government-imposed travel restrictions are eased.
“Sadly, today the hard truth is that by every indicator we have available to us, we believe that we will be materially smaller for at least three years,” Craig Landry, Air Canada’s executive vice-president of operations, said in the memo.
The announcement comes amid ongoing border shutdowns and confinement measures that have tanked travel demand, prompting Air Canada to ground some 225 airplanes.
“We therefore took the extremely difficult decision today to significantly downsize our operation to align with forecasts, which regrettably means reducing our workforce by 50 to 60 per cent,” the airline said in an statement on Friday evening. “We estimate about 20,000 people will be affected.”
At a minimum, layoffs will reach 19,000 — half of the current payroll — and could go as high as 22,800.
The blow echoes on a bigger scale Air Canada’s announcement in March to let go nearly half of its workforce under a cost reduction scheme. The carrier proceeded to rehire some 16,500 laid-off flight attendants, mechanics and customer service agents in April under the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, but has not committed to maintain the program past June 6.
To minimize the number of layoffs, Air Canada will ask flight attendants to slash their schedules, go on leave for up to two years or resign with travel privileges, according to an internal bulletin to members from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) sent out Thursday night and obtained by The Canadian Press.
Airline mulling wage subsidy decision
The memo stated that CUPE is in discussions with Air Canada over continuing the federal wage subsidy.
“We know this news is not what any of us were expecting,” said the bulletin, signed by the president of CUPE’s Air Canada component and two other union officials.
“The reality is that COVID-19 has severely impacted the demand for air travel over the past few months and into the foreseeable future. As such, there is no denying that we are dealing with the largest surplus of cabin personnel in our history.” (CBC)
