FAQs

Any pilots who submitted a representation card during the organizing process will automatically become ALPA members upon certification by the CIRB. Pilots who did not fill out a card can access the online form or download a membership application at kew.alpa.org and fill it out to become a member.

No one can make you join. However, once ALPA is certified and the pilots have a contract in place, you will be required to pay dues in accordance with the Rand Formula, which was established in 1946 by Justice Ivan Rand of the Supreme Court of Canada. If you choose this option, you will not receive many of the benefits that members receive. In addition, a nonmember will not be able to vote on matters affecting the internal workings of the union. In Canadian labour law, union dues are mandatory regardless of the worker's union status to ensure that no employee will opt out of the union simply to avoid dues, but still reap the benefits of the union's accomplishments, such as ensuring higher wages, better job security, or other benefits and protections.

The ALPA Constitution requires applicants to pay, or make arrangements to satisfy, past financial obligations to ALPA before they can be accepted into membership. Arrangement plans are available for past obligations.

ALPA is a democratic union organized with pilot members driving decision-making from the bottom up. It is a member-run, staff-supported union.

Here's how it works:
• Local councils are established at most pilot bases, and each local council elects a representative for each status (captain or first officer) or seniority block. As a single-council MEC, the elected representatives from the local council will also make up the Master Executive Council (MEC) for the Keewatin Air pilots.
• Each MEC is given primary responsibility for determining its relationship with management, making decisions about its contract and bargaining goals, and given discretion over dispute resolution and contract administration. ALPA assigns professional staff to work with and advise local leaders, but elected pilot representatives make final decisions.
• At a national level, ALPA is governed by three groups: the Board of Directors, the Executive Board, and the Executive Council.
• The Board of Directors (BOD) is the largest group, and it has the greatest authority. It consists of the local council representatives from every ALPA local council—approximately 220 pilots. It meets at least every two years and is responsible for setting the Association's course, modifying (when necessary) the governing documents, and electing national officers.
• The Executive Board is the second largest group, and its authority is second to the Board of Directors. The Executive Board is made up of the MEC chairs from each airline—so it presently has 39 members. It meets at least twice a year to make sure that the BOD's decisions are being implemented and to consider certain significant decisions reserved to the Executive Board in the ALPA Constitution & By-Laws and other policies.
• The smallest group, the Executive Council, is charged with overseeing the administration of the union, which includes such things as establishing and overseeing the budget and making day-to-day interpretations of ALPA’s governing rules. In addition, the Executive Council makes recommendations to the Executive Board or Board of Directors for final decision. The Executive Council currently has 13 members: four national officers and nine executive vice presidents elected from “election groups” described in the ALPA Constitution & By-Laws.
• The process for selecting executive vice presidents has changed many times over the years as the membership and needs of the Association have changed. Under the current structure, each airline with more than 4,000 members or $10 million in annual dues elects one executive vice president. Smaller U.S. airlines are placed in one of three election groups, and each of those groups chooses a single executive vice president. Canadian airlines choose a single executive vice president.
• In the portion of the ALPA Constitution that describes executive vice president elections, the letters A, B, and C are used to designate the different groups from which executive vice presidents are chosen—A for the largest carriers, B for the other U.S. carriers, and C for the Canadian carriers. The letters are just that—letters. They’re not grades or designations of importance. In fact, airlines assigned to the B and C groups get proportionally more representation per member on the Executive Council than airlines in the A group.

As members of ALPA, Keewatin Air pilots will have democratic control over their activities and will decide on issues that are important to them. When certified by the CIRB, internal elections among the pilot group who are members of the union will be held to elect individuals both to serve on the Master Executive Council (MEC) and to represent you on a Bargaining Committee to negotiate a collective agreement. The Bargaining Committee, assisted by experienced professional negotiators and lawyers from ALPA, will negotiate your first collective agreement based on your representatives' direction and with assistance and input from you, the members. This tentative collective agreement will be brought back to the members for ratification before it can be finalized.

A collective agreement can contain any terms and conditions that are agreed upon by the union and the employer. Typically, collective agreements contain provisions for pay rates, scheduling and duty rules, shift premiums, vacations, statutory holidays, seniority, job postings, job security, benefit plans, uniform allowances, sick leave, leaves of absence, access to personnel files, duty day, meals, minimum crew rest, expenses, layover parameters, disciplinary procedures, and the grievance procedure to enforce the rights contained in the collective agreement. Members will be encouraged to identify the employment conditions that are important to them, so that those priorities can be included in a collective agreement.

A collective agreement does not take away an employer's right to manage its business. The employer still makes management decisions with respect to how the organization will be run, but it must do so in accordance with the rights of employees as contained in the collective agreement.

Union dues represent the fee paid by members to support ALPA's activities on your behalf. Remember, dues obligations will begin only after the Keewatin Air pilot group reaches a collective agreement .

The rate—currently 1.85% of gross monthly earnings—is established by ALPA members and reviewed periodically.

Please review the ALPA Constitution & By-Laws for income exempt from dues.

ALPA member dues are used to pay for contract negotiations, legal fees, and general operating expenses, as well as salaries for its staff of communications, safety, technical, financial, and legal experts. The vast majority of ALPA workers are in fact unpaid volunteer pilots, like you, who serve as elected board members and committee representatives.

With ALPA, you will not pay dues until the Association is formally certified and an agreement is in place. Moreover, dues are also tax deductible. Read more on dues from the Canada Revenue Agency . In fact, the actual dues you would end up paying may be less than what you are now paying for a parking pass, but the protection you will receive is enduring.

After Keewatin Air pilots elect ALPA, interim pilot leaders will be appointed quickly to begin work on behalf of our pilot group. Most important are:

1. The steps to put democratically elected permanent representatives in place, and
2. Preparation for work to address key concerns in negotiations.

Very soon after CIRB certification, the ALPA Executive Council will create a local council for our pilot group and appoint interim representatives. These representatives will also serve as the initial Keewatin Air ALPA Master Executive Council (MEC) as a single-council MEC.

The MEC will be able to establish committees in its first few months of operation. These committees are likely to include Safety, Retirement and Insurance, Contract Study, and others. ALPA professional experts in each area will meet with the committees soon after their formation to outline resources available, provide training, and outline the committee's goals and work schedule.

The interim local council representatives will get things started, but as soon as a strong majority of pilots have become members, an election process will begin so that we can choose our own representatives. That process will start with a nominating meeting. It's critical for all pilots to submit membership applications as soon as possible after certification in order to attend local council meetings and vote to elect representatives.

Under Section 37 of the CLC, a trade union, including all of its union representatives, is bound to provide a duty of fair representation to all employees it represents. Unlike what we currently have, oversight of this duty is provided by the CIRB that hears cases involving the duty of fair representation.

Your ALPA representatives will have the ability to legally and collectively represent the Keewatin Air pilot group as a whole. In addition to the protections that association members have contained within the Canada Labor Code, your representatives are also bound to the Code of Ethics and Constitution and By-Laws. As per the ALPA Constitution, representatives can be recalled by the membership.

The orange card is issued to all ALPA members and contains contact information for the ALPA Worldwide Accident/Incident Hotline, which connects members to immediate support and professional assistance. This critical service is one of the fundamental reasons for ALPA's existence. If you are involved in an aircraft accident or incident, you are entitled to and will receive extensive professional legal and technical representation. The hotline is staffed 24/7/365 by knowledgeable experts who have "heard it all before." They will provide you with guidance on how to proceed and, if necessary, immediately dispatch a team of legal and technical experts to assist you. An ALPA accident investigator will be assigned to the TSB investigation on your behalf. Companies often say they will look after you in the event of an accident, but the end result can be quite different. ALPA is completely committed to supporting your needs, and the protection it offers continues—even in the unfortunate event of your death, protection will be extended to your estate.

Under current law the affected companies are under no legal obligation to discuss the impact of a merger/acquisition with you or any of the other pilots in your airline prior to any decisions being made. Your seniority may not be protected and you could end up being severely disadvantaged. However, if you are represented by a certified union, your company will have an obligation to confer with your union. This obligation is often included in the collective agreement between your union and the employer. Now imagine that your company were taken over by another larger airline. How do you think things would work out if the new company decided that certain positions were now considered redundant and wanted to trim the workforce to gain cost-savings? Furthermore, what would happen if the other company's employees were unionized and your company's were not? Obviously, the pilots with union representation would have a voice to be heard during the merger process in both a prospective and a reactive sense. This would represent a significant advantage over employees with no union representation.

ALPA would not take sides. Rather, ALPA’s ALPA’s Fragmentation and Merger Policy would be followed. Therein, the affected MECs from the companies in question would enter a bargaining/mediation-arbitration process in order to resolve any issues concerning the integration of the seniority lists. Essentially, ALPA’s role would be to provide the procedural mechanism/vehicle for this process.

How ALPA spends its funds is determined by the members and outlined in its Constitution and By-Laws. When you become a member of ALPA, you become a decision maker as to how ALPA spends its money. Members' dues are not used for political lobbying in Canada or the United States.

There are two potentially overlapping statutory freezes in a situation where a union seeks certification for a proposed bargaining unit and then gets certified:

1. One from the date the employer receives notice of an application for certification until 30 days after certification (see Section 24(4) of the Canada Labour Code); and
2. The other from the date an employer receives notice to bargain until 21 days after the conciliation procedures under the Code have been exhausted (see Section 50(b) and Sections 89(1)(a)-(d) of the Canada Labour Code).

A statutory freeze is better described as “business as before.” This approach does not mean that an employer cannot manage its operations. It simply means that an employer must continue to run the operation according to the pattern established before the circumstances that triggered the statutory freeze. In essence, since the purpose of a statutory freeze is to protect employees’ fundamental freedom of association guaranteed under Section 8(1) of the Canada Labour Code, the status quo as it relates to terms and conditions of employment must be preserved during the bargaining process until the conciliation procedures of the Code have been exhausted, unless the union consents otherwise.

In practice, once a true impasse is reached (conceivably as early as after one full exchange of proposals), either the employer or the union may file a notice of dispute with the Minister of Labour (see Section 71 of the Canada Labour Code). The Minister of Labour would then have 15 days from the receipt of this notice to appoint either a conciliation officer, conciliation board, conciliation commissioner, or to take no action (see Section 72 of the Canada Labour Code).

Usually, a conciliation officer (CO) is appointed to work with the parties to resolve their differences. A CO generally has a 60-day mandate. However, the parties, if they both agree, may request an extension of the time for conciliation (see Section 75 of the Canada Labour Code). Once the aforementioned time period has passed, the CO will submit a report to the Minister. Upon receipt of the report, the Minister of Labour will release a copy of it to the parties, and a 21-day cooling-off period begins (see Section 89 of the Canada Labour Code).

During the cooling-off period, the Minister of Labour can also appoint a mediator to continue to assist the parties in reaching an agreement.

Section 79(1) of the Canada Labour Code allows the employer and the union to agree to send unresolved issues at the bargaining table to an arbitrator for final and binding determination. That is contract “arbitration.”

Contract “mediation” may be used by the parties during the bargaining process (such mediation would be voluntarily requested by both parties). For instance, some bargaining processes see a mediator (or even two) there from the outset. “Mediation” is not to be confused with “conciliation,” which is a specific process under the Canada Labour Code that is one of a number of steps along the path to securing legal strike/lockout rights.

There’s really no set range. Ultimately, if the parties get along and are fairly close in their respective positions, first contracts could be completed in a matter of months. If relations are more contentious, it could take longer, particularly since the length of the process depends on a myriad of different factors (e.g., proposals at issue, lack of any written terms and conditions of employment prior to certification, etc.) and how either party chooses to exercise its rights under the Canada Labour Code. Nevertheless, collective bargaining in Canada generally takes much less time than in the United States of America.

Keep in mind though that under Section 80 of the Canada Labour Code, once the conciliation procedures under the Code have been exhausted, the Minster of Labour may, if the Minister considers it necessary or advisable, direct the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to inquire into the dispute. If the CIRB considers it advisable, the CIRB may settle the terms of a first collective agreement (and the collective agreement would last for two years).