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