Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Reading

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Understated
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by Understated »

vic777 wrote:Are you saying that if the FlyPast60 group dropped all their complaints and closed up shop and walked away, if all those complainants just decided to stay retired that come September, mandatory retirement will be a thing of the past? And that there's nothing AC or ACPA or the FlyPast60 group can do about it?

That is exactly what I am saying. Once the amendment comes into force, its over. Those who retired prior to the coming into force of the repeal can still file complaints that will be dealt with by the Tribunal, and those who are already before the Tribunal will still be dealt with by the Tribunal. But there won't be any new complaints because it will be patently illegal to terminate anyone on the basis of age.

The implications for Air Canada and ACPA are substantial. There is no appeal to an Act of Parliament. History. Good-bye. Conform. Get used to it. Move on.

The implications for the existing court cases are significant, as well, because once the government outlaws mandatory retirement, Air Canada and ACPA can be successful before the Tribunal and the courts in regard to the existing complaints only by persuading the courts that the violation of the equality provisions of the Charter by the mandatory retirement exemption is justified under Section 1 of the Charter. That requires that it meet several constituional tests, including the requirement that the legislation be "pressing and substantial." How can it meet that test if the government just repealed it and the Minister of Labour says that it does not fit with contemporary Canadian values?

I would fully expect that once this Bill passes, but before it comes into effect, Air Canada will abandon its mandatory retirement policy, with or without the participation of ACPA. Why keep incurring more damages when a loss is virtually guaranteed, and the need to change is unavoidable?
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by Understated »

yycflyguy wrote:This is a private members bill!!! It is not law...yet. It still has to pass the Senate.
Yes, it is a private member’s Bill. But watch the video on the link above. You will see both the Minister of Labour and the Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Justice not only speaking in favour of the Bill, but saying that mandatory retirement is an outmoded concept that does not fit with current Canadian values. Ditto for the opposition party members. The Bill passed second reading unanimously.

Why, with that position taken by all of the parties, especially the government, would you not think that the legislative end to mandatory retirement is confronting you right in your face?
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by TyrellCorp »

vic777 wrote:Basically you are saying that, I should give my money to you.
Ha that'll be the day! As if! I suspect it would be easier to squeeze water from a stone than pry your money from your tightly clenched hands. You in the general sense BTW.

In fact what I'm saying is, don't take MY money. You've already had a much bigger share than I'll ever have and now you want to take some of what little I have. Can you understand this concept? It has nothing to do with what age one is allowed to retire at. I don't care when you retire as long as it doesn't come at my expense, but we all know that's not how the fly past group wants this to play out. To this effect they turned down my EMJ job at almost three times my pay. They wanted the 777. They claimed that the Embraer was an entry level airplane and as such didn't want it. What does that tell you. I thought they just wanted to return to WORK. So far it seems to me that they will take at our expense and try to justify it a thousand ways. Remember it was one of you that said, it's not about fairness but about the law. I rest my case.
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by accumulous »

You think the merger created hostile feelings? This fight for "human dignity" will be way worse....
And there, ladies and gentlemen, in a nutshell, is the reaction from the runaway train.

A small bunch of guys, relatively speaking, the only guys in all of North America, on the only set of train tracks that are headed in exactly the opposite direction from the rest of the continent, taking on Parliament in a completely senseless battle because they want some senior pilots off the seniority list.

The end of mandatory retirement provides EVERY pilot with the right to have a completely open-ended career with huge opportunities. Virtually every pilot on the AC seniority list cannot make max years of service for pension purposes, criterion number 1, because of a Tribunal Order a very long time ago that outlawed hiring age restrictions. Consequently, a few decades later, the massive demographic shift results in grossly stunted pensions for everybody at 60.

Yet millions are invested trying to prevent the opening of the stunted top end to let everybody including themselves through into the light because it just isn’t time yet. Let’s just see if we can clean off a few hundred more numbers up there, then it might be time, wink-wink, nudge-nudge. And on this very forum the suggestions are that we can just hammer the senior pilots anyway with their own ‘special’ contract. It was already tried once and didn’t work, but this train is not slowing down, what the hell, let’s try it again. Let’s vote them a pay cut so nobody on the list can meet the best earnings, pension criterion number 2, when they hit 60. That’ll show us. And please be quiet, PG'ers, we know what we're doing.

Somewhere in the middle of the night about a DECADE ago, the entire JAZZ conglomerate dropped age 60 restrictions in about 5 minutes and passed your runaway train in the middle of the night headed in the opposite direction. On board with them were all the WestJet pilots. The train had already been boarded by Transport Canada eons ago, and every other airline pilot in the country. That same train made one stop in 2007 to pick up all 45,000 airline pilots in the United States at over 36 member airlines, and that same train converged with a massive shuttle that was carrying airline pilots from all over the globe. They had the market cornered in the brains department.

But not us. The only train that missed the connection to a wide open career in aviation is the one we are riding on. Somebody got the bright idea to get up into the engine room and see if they could defy all the laws and statutes in the country, get the damn thing up into a good head of steam, hold a vote to try to keep everybody on board including the whole pile of guys who were against it, and just mash that throttle to the wall. At every intersection there was a warning. But no turning back. Just fire and brimstone, hostility, and derision, all the things that make a good head of steam, and not much else. Now the damn thing is in a dead-end tunnel going about 200 miles an hour and the lights have gone out. Now what? Maybe somebody try the brakes?
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Lost in Saigon
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by Lost in Saigon »

TyrellCorp wrote: To this effect they turned down my EMJ job at almost three times my pay. They wanted the 777. They claimed that the Embraer was an entry level airplane and as such didn't want it. What does that tell you. I thought they just wanted to return to WORK. So far it seems to me that they will take at our expense and try to justify it a thousand ways. Remember it was one of you that said, it's not about fairness but about the law. I rest my case.
They didn't turn down the EMB First Officer positions. Who told you that? ACPA? :lol:

They turned down the MOA. The MOA that no one was seen. The MOA is so ridiculous that ACPA won't even show it to us.
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Raymond Hall
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by Raymond Hall »

TyrellCorp wrote:To this effect they turned down my EMJ job at almost three times my pay. They wanted the 777. They claimed that the Embraer was an entry level airplane and as such didn't want it. What does that tell you.
It tells me that you have not been properly informed by your Association of the facts surrounding the events.
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by Understated »

accumulous wrote:Somebody got the bright idea to get up into the engine room and see if they could defy all the laws and statutes in the country, get the damn thing up into a good head of steam, hold a vote to try to keep everybody on board including the whole pile of guys who were against it, and just mash that throttle to the wall.
Speaking of the ACPA 2006 Vote that ACPA used to support its pre-chosen position, words that are attributed to Benjamin Franklin come to mind: "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch."

That is why human rights laws were enacted. Democratic processes, including collective bargaining, are sometimes insufficient to accomplish society's overall objectives, so human rights law are accorded quasi-constitutional status and allowed to supersede the laws of the majority, especially within organizations where the interest of the majority may come into direct conflict with the interests of the minority.

And that is why, according to the statements of the Members of Parliament on Monday, that this exemption clause to the general prohibition against age discrimination is being repealed. It no longer meets with the overall objectives of contemporary Canadian society.
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by Raymond Hall »

Here is an Business News Network interview of Ms. Susan Eng, VP, Advocacy, Canadian Association of Retired Persons, televised yesterday, re Bill C-481 Second Reading, with a discussion of the Air Canada pilot issues included:

http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip386062
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by duranium »

accumulous

I can only wish I had your artistry with words. Your last post should be required reading for every antagonist on both side of the equation. Well said.

D.O.
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by Understated »

Sorry. I posted the message re ACPA's decision to not contest the Tribunal remedy decision in this thread by mistake. I have now copied over to the CHRT Remedy thread.
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by Raymond Hall »

The following reply to an inquiry of a Member of Parliament is respresentative of the government's position on Bill C-481, and goes a long way to explaining why the Bill received the unanimous support of all Parties in the House of Commons, at Second Reading:

Thank you for your email in support of Bill C-481, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Canada Labour Code (mandatory retirement age). My view, and the position of the Government of Canada, is that there is a lot of merit in pursuing what is being proposed in Bill C-481. …

This Conservative government is committed to protecting the rights of hard working Canadians. We recognize that forcing the most experienced Canadians to retire is a gross form of age discrimination, and one that cannot be allowed to continue in this difficult economic environment. We believe that the choice to retire should be dependent on a person’s lifestyle, financial situation, and health circumstances; not an arbitrary age set by the government of Canada.

Bill C-481 is important as it represents consistent progress toward improving current employment practices to better represent the rights of Canadian workers.
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by MackTheKnife »

accumulous wrote:
You think the merger created hostile feelings? This fight for "human dignity" will be way worse....
And there, ladies and gentlemen, in a nutshell, is the reaction from the runaway train.

A small bunch of guys, relatively speaking, the only guys in all of North America, on the only set of train tracks that are headed in exactly the opposite direction from the rest of the continent, taking on Parliament in a completely senseless battle because they want some senior pilots off the seniority list.

The end of mandatory retirement provides EVERY pilot with the right to have a completely open-ended career with huge opportunities. Virtually every pilot on the AC seniority list cannot make max years of service for pension purposes, criterion number 1, because of a Tribunal Order a very long time ago that outlawed hiring age restrictions. Consequently, a few decades later, the massive demographic shift results in grossly stunted pensions for everybody at 60.

Yet millions are invested trying to prevent the opening of the stunted top end to let everybody including themselves through into the light because it just isn’t time yet. Let’s just see if we can clean off a few hundred more numbers up there, then it might be time, wink-wink, nudge-nudge. And on this very forum the suggestions are that we can just hammer the senior pilots anyway with their own ‘special’ contract. It was already tried once and didn’t work, but this train is not slowing down, what the hell, let’s try it again. Let’s vote them a pay cut so nobody on the list can meet the best earnings, pension criterion number 2, when they hit 60. That’ll show us. And please be quiet, PG'ers, we know what we're doing.

Somewhere in the middle of the night about a DECADE ago, the entire JAZZ conglomerate dropped age 60 restrictions in about 5 minutes and passed your runaway train in the middle of the night headed in the opposite direction. On board with them were all the WestJet pilots. The train had already been boarded by Transport Canada eons ago, and every other airline pilot in the country. That same train made one stop in 2007 to pick up all 45,000 airline pilots in the United States at over 36 member airlines, and that same train converged with a massive shuttle that was carrying airline pilots from all over the globe. They had the market cornered in the brains department.

But not us. The only train that missed the connection to a wide open career in aviation is the one we are riding on. Somebody got the bright idea to get up into the engine room and see if they could defy all the laws and statutes in the country, get the damn thing up into a good head of steam, hold a vote to try to keep everybody on board including the whole pile of guys who were against it, and just mash that throttle to the wall. At every intersection there was a warning. But no turning back. Just fire and brimstone, hostility, and derision, all the things that make a good head of steam, and not much else. Now the damn thing is in a dead-end tunnel going about 200 miles an hour and the lights have gone out. Now what? Maybe somebody try the brakes?
Post of the century !!

You listening ACPA ?


Or do you still have a few more hundred thousand $$$ to waste on lawyers in a forgone conclusion of this losing battle?
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by LeadingEdge »

accumulous wrote:
You think the merger created hostile feelings? This fight for "human dignity" will be way worse....
And there, ladies and gentlemen, in a nutshell, is the reaction from the runaway train.

A small bunch of guys, relatively speaking, the only guys in all of North America, on the only set of train tracks that are headed in exactly the opposite direction from the rest of the continent, taking on Parliament in a completely senseless battle because they want some senior pilots off the seniority list.

The end of mandatory retirement provides EVERY pilot with the right to have a completely open-ended career with huge opportunities. Virtually every pilot on the AC seniority list cannot make max years of service for pension purposes, criterion number 1, because of a Tribunal Order a very long time ago that outlawed hiring age restrictions. Consequently, a few decades later, the massive demographic shift results in grossly stunted pensions for everybody at 60.

Yet millions are invested trying to prevent the opening of the stunted top end to let everybody including themselves through into the light because it just isn’t time yet. Let’s just see if we can clean off a few hundred more numbers up there, then it might be time, wink-wink, nudge-nudge. And on this very forum the suggestions are that we can just hammer the senior pilots anyway with their own ‘special’ contract. It was already tried once and didn’t work, but this train is not slowing down, what the hell, let’s try it again. Let’s vote them a pay cut so nobody on the list can meet the best earnings, pension criterion number 2, when they hit 60. That’ll show us. And please be quiet, PG'ers, we know what we're doing.

Somewhere in the middle of the night about a DECADE ago, the entire JAZZ conglomerate dropped age 60 restrictions in about 5 minutes and passed your runaway train in the middle of the night headed in the opposite direction. On board with them were all the WestJet pilots. The train had already been boarded by Transport Canada eons ago, and every other airline pilot in the country. That same train made one stop in 2007 to pick up all 45,000 airline pilots in the United States at over 36 member airlines, and that same train converged with a massive shuttle that was carrying airline pilots from all over the globe. They had the market cornered in the brains department.

But not us. The only train that missed the connection to a wide open career in aviation is the one we are riding on. Somebody got the bright idea to get up into the engine room and see if they could defy all the laws and statutes in the country, get the damn thing up into a good head of steam, hold a vote to try to keep everybody on board including the whole pile of guys who were against it, and just mash that throttle to the wall. At every intersection there was a warning. But no turning back. Just fire and brimstone, hostility, and derision, all the things that make a good head of steam, and not much else. Now the damn thing is in a dead-end tunnel going about 200 miles an hour and the lights have gone out. Now what? Maybe somebody try the brakes?
Man, your arrogance never ceases to amaze me. I am ONE of the group that you are purporting to represent with your comments... Understand this:

I don't want an open ended career, I WANT to retire at 60 with the career that I signed on for.

You are stealing my career and earnings under the guise of human rights - what about my rights??? I have the right to the career and earnings that I signed on for...

You are telling me that I can have the same earnings for 5 years extra work, and You are shocked that I am PISSED OFF about it???

You are subjecting a PG group Pilot to 2-5 years of substandard wages, and you wonder why they are PISSED???

You have forgotten about the pyramid that your retired position was based on, don't be surprised if it changes...

LE
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by Rockie »

Read the title of the thread and then call your Member of Parliament. Maybe you can convince enough MP's and the rest of Canadian society that they have it all wrong and should see things your way. If not, you might consider getting on with the task of dealing with it and trying to convince our union to do the same.

"You have forgotten about the pyramid that your retired position was based on, don't be surprised if it changes..."

It won't be a surprise. Everybody including the flypast60 group knows ending mandatory retirement will likely necessitate changes to our contract and method of compensation. Everybody but ACPA that is, because they are still negotiating a contract under the assumption that mandatory retirement stays. How long do you think the contract will run for?
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by vic777 »

Rockie wrote:Everybody including the flypast60 group knows ending mandatory retirement will likely necessitate changes to our contract and method of compensation. Everybody but ACPA that is, because they are still negotiating a contract under the assumption that mandatory retirement stays. How long do you think the contract will run for?
The Company will get increased productivity and reduced training costs as a result of these events. Will ACPA get any of these gains for the troops? Has anybody at ACPA even tried to figure out how much AC will benefit from this New World Order?
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by bcflyer »

It won't be all savings if this "new world order" comes to be. Think of all the senior F/A's, rampies, CSA's etc who will be able to continue working. These people are at the very top of their payscales and will cost the company alot of money if they don't have to retire. (no newbies at the bottom of the scale while the senior dogs at the top pay scale keep working) There is alot more at risk than people may think....
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by vic777 »

bcflyer wrote:It won't be all savings if this "new world order" comes to be. ... There is alot more at risk than people may think....
There is no "if". The "new world order" is a certainty. There is nothing "at risk". The game is over. Employees will be working longer and retiring at an older age, period, case closed, end of story. Management could take pay cuts and give up their bonuses , to cut costs. AC and ACPA must find solutions. It's ACPA's job to raise the benefits to the Pilots. This must be done, within the parameters of the new reality. There is no increase in Pilots costs, there is a decrease .... the fleet size remains the same ... overall Pilot costs are down ... training is down ... pension costs are down as Pilots work longer and retirees are pensioned for fewer years. ACPA should figure out how many hundreds of millions these Pilot savings are ... and get it for the Pilots. Is there anybody in ACPA, who has any idea how much AC will save on Pilot costs due to "the new world order"?
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by MackTheKnife »

vic777 wrote:Is there anybody in ACPA, who has any idea how much AC will save on Pilot costs due to "the new world order"?
With the apparent vacuum at the top of the ACPA head shed, is there any body in ACPA that even cares?
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by pilotidentity »

"The defining characteristics of the baby boomers have been their sense of self-importance and limitless entitlement".

Lets have the courage to think of the others coming behind us.
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by accumulous »

The defining characteristics of the baby boomers have been their sense of self-importance and limitless entitlement.
Lets have the courage to think of the others coming behind us.
A couple of small groups HAVE had the courage. Enormous courage.

The first group ensured that age was not a restriction to getting hired. In the highly competitive world of preparation for a career in aviation, it can take a lot of years to get the required qualifications to be there when the timing is right. Pilots well into their forties and beyond can be there, thanks to a few to dared to stand up to a seemingly overwhelming force aligned against them.

The second group has now seen to it that the career path is wide open at the top, like every other pilot in all of North America.

Entitlement?

Until recent rulings by the powers that be, there was NO entitlement for the vast majority of pilots currently on the list, in either hiring or career duration parameters.

‘Special’ interest groups in ‘special’ parts of the seniority list have always managed to summon huge resources to fight anybody who would even dream of realizing their individual rights to a career path of their choosing as afforded them by Parliament.

Entitlement?

The ‘Special’ interest group sense of entitlement has gone so far as to include using the dues of the huge number of pilots that have had no representation whatsoever, through the guise of 'democratic' process.

Utilizing the resources of the very pilots who want have the right to choose their own individual retirement terms as provided for them in the Charter, numbering well into the many hundreds, a number, for illustration purposes, equal to far more than the population of the entire Montreal and Winnipeg bases combined, and almost as high as the entire population of the Vancouver base. That's a lot of resources for the taking.

Nice trick if you can pull it off.

How much courage does it take to tackle a group that will even sewer their own pension prospects in a quest to prevent others from achieving their individual rights?

It took a HUGE amount of courage to go up against Kamikazes in previous engagements, as those guys were only fueled for a one way trip, and they were totally committed to one purpose.

We’re seeing that again in a different arena and it’s just as scary and make no mistake, it required a LOT of courage to take it on.

The ridiculously sad sequel to it all is that like all the other senseless battles that have gone before, long after the last Kamikaze augers in, EVERYBODY including the completely unrepresented hundreds and hundreds of pilots, will be picking up the tab.
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by Raymond Hall »

accumulous wrote:A couple of small groups HAVE had the courage. Enormous courage.
For many of us it was not courage that was required. It was vision. It simply came down to logic and strategic vision. As I said in another post, from the time that I first became involved in this issue it was obvious to me that the constraints of the mandatory retirement exemption were outside of the Association's power to overcome. Hence, in the long run it was not in the pilots' best interest or in ACPA's best interest to pursue that option.

The only proper way to deal with the inevitable change, in my view, then and now, was to embrace it, to get out in front of it and to restructure our own work environment and collective agreement in order to not only manage the issue, but to share some of the economic benefits to be realized by the implementation of the impending changes.

ACPA obviously did not share that vision. Perhaps it still doesn't.

I will candidly say, however, that even if it did not require courage, it did require resources, both financial resources and organizational resources.

In hindsight it is obvious that one pilot alone could never have taken on Air Canada and ACPA together and obtained reinstatement, no matter how determined he might have been, given their intent to either prevent this or to delay it for as long as possible, no matter what the cost. No pilot alone could have the resources to do that.
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by sepia »

Courage? A 20 year old farm boy from Yorkton storming the beach in Normandy is courage.
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by accumulous »

Courage? A 20 year old farm boy from Yorkton storming the beach in Normandy is courage.
Good point, but he didn't have to watch his back.
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by Understated »

Raymond Hall wrote:In hindsight it is obvious that one pilot alone could never have taken on Air Canada and ACPA together and obtained reinstatement, no matter how determined he might have been, given their intent to either prevent this or to delay it for as long as possible, no matter what the cost. No pilot alone could have the resources to do that.
As I see it, there are three different aspects of this. First, there is the realization that the "normal age of retirement" is a moving target. Once ICAO moved off age 60, the writing was on the wall for ACPA. Try as it might to avoid the inevitable, in 2006 it was time for ACPA to honestly and forthrightly re-examine the legal merits of the status quo and re-inform its members about the game-change that was about affect its ability under the statutory exemption to prevent changes to its sacred age 60 limit.

Second, there was this pesky "Charter" problem. Nobody really got the picture on that (perhaps most pilots still don't have a clear view of the implications of it) until the Tribunal, on the strong decision of the Federal Court, got its mind around the nature of the ball game. Who raised that issue? George Vilven. Vision. And now another dozen unions representing tens of thousands of members in all sorts of professions, inside and outside of the aviation industry, are in the queue behind his original Charter challenge at the Tribunal, not opposing the change, but supporting it.

Third, there is this small "legislation" problem. The federal jurisdiction was an island alienated in a sea of cultural change that had rejected mandatory retirement for all sorts of reasons. How long could anyone realistically expect the federal government to uphold the status quo on mandatory retirement? The government introduced a Bill in 1992 to repeal the exemption. Separately, the very same SCC judge who wrote the McKinney decision in 1990 upholding the mandatory retirement provision that ACPA holds so dearly chaired the CHRC Review Panel in 2000 that recommended abolishing mandatory retirement. The real question then was why did it take until 2009 for another Bill to come before Parliament to put this exemption provision out of its misery? So Bill C-481 should come as no surprise. And unanimous acceptance of the Bill, with the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Justice speaking in favour of it should also come as no surprise either. It's over.

So where was ACPA on all of this? Teamed up with Air Canada, saying: Deny. Deny. Deny.

Vision...
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Re: Repeal of Mandatory Retirement Bill Passes Second Readin

Post by accumulous »

The one thing that emerges from all this is that we are in dire need of an overall Steering Committee. The engines appear to be cranking out the horsepower, what we need now is a rudder.

Steering Committee Definition:

Advisory committee comprised usually of high level stakeholders and/or reputed experts who provide guidance on key issues such as company policy and objectives, budgetary control, marketing strategy, resource allocation, and decisions involving large expenditures.

Most successful professional organizations utilize a somewhat independent body of advising experts who have the expertise to determine courses of action BEFORE pushback.

We have a long history of taking on the exact wrong end of the legal stick. Find the right course of action, then put us on precisely the opposite end of that. Lawsuits and litigation continue to pile up against the association that didn’t need to be pursued in the first place when other solutions were readily available for the benefit of the entire membership.

Now the retirement issue orders are either here or forthcoming, and general mandatory retirement in the federally regulated sector itself is being canceled, and it appears that control of the retirement parameters for pilots is being handed solely to the courts for no logical reason whatsoever at massive cost.

That doesn’t mean that future issues can’t be handled in more efficient ways. We just need to take examples from some of the major successful corporations and learn how to apply them.

Has there ever been a somewhat independent expert Steering Committee to point the way for all these issues before they light the burners?
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