Dockjock wrote:Raymond Hall if I understand you correctly, you are arguing that the current no age limit for AC pilots is only a partial victory.
There is no "victory" that I see. I and the 200+ others who have financed this litigation against both the employer and the union are now no better off than we were on the day we were forced out, save for the cards in our hands. Not so for those who financed the union's legal fight via increased union dues, in order to delay the inevitable. They may consider that a victory, but that has to be viewed in context--the ball game isn't over yet. We are in the bottom of the 8th inning, the bases are loaded and there is a huge one-sided wager riding on the final score. If we lose, we simply lose a valiant fight and the status quo remains unchanged. If those who oppose this lose...well, that is an entirely different story. The chickens will indeed come home to roost.
I find it amusing that many refuse to inculcate into their psyches various facts. On the previous page I pointed out that mandatory retirement in Canada and at Air Canada was
never guaranteed--that income expectations based upon continued forced retirements were unfounded. There was no "contract" that pilots accepted, implied or otherwise, on being hired, that required them to retire at age 60, because the future retirements and the corresponding income expectations were
always conditional on satisfying the requirements of the narrow exemption in the legislation that permitted mandatory retirement at the "normal age of retirement for individuals performing similar work."
Sometime between the year 1957, when mandatory retirement was introduced for Air Canada pilots unilaterally by the employer, not by agreement with the pilots, and the year 2005 when the majority of these complaints started pouring in, the "normal age" moved off age 60. That is a fact. So at some point, age 60 was then the
exception, not the
norm, and termination of employment on the basis of age contravened the law. Those terminated on the basis of a statutory provision that didn't apply then gained the legal right to object to the discriminatory practice that was improperly imposed upon them, and to seek redress. There is no magic to that.
Much as many would like to believe that the issue here should be focused on income distribution, career expectations and the like--it isn't. There was never any guarantee to any expectation, especially in an industry as volatile as the airline industry. It's about law, pure and simple--the law of discrimination on the basis of age, and ultimately the law of liability and the law of remedy.
That is the message that I have been relentlessly putting forward since 2006. The patent irony of all this is that the employer recently described in its financial statements some remarkable numbers posted as gains from the repeal of mandatory retirement--gains that could have been shared and used to offset any adverse consequences of the change, per my suggestions from 2006 through 2012. Lost. They were never seriously considered because emotion triumphed over logic and politics triumphed over reason.
But even more remarkable is the fact that the message about the underlying issue is apparently still falling on deaf ears.
