Job action once again slows travellers at Pearson Airport
Passengers travelling into or out of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport were once again being warned of delays Tuesday due to an ongoing job action by security screeners at the airport.
Scott Armstrong, a spokesman for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, said it appears that the screeners are once again intentionally slowing security lines at the country’s largest airport as a part of a work-to-rule campaign protesting changes to how their scheduling is done.
Armstrong said the delays appear to be concentrated at Terminal 3 Tuesday, although there are also some delays at Terminal 1. WestJet Airlines Ltd. has its operations based out of Terminal 3, as does British Airways, American Airlines, and several other U.S. carriers. Air Canada has the bulk of its operations in Terminal 1.
Passengers are being encouraged to check the status of their flights before departing for the airport, and to anticipate long lines, Armstrong said.
“There are long lineups at Terminal 3. There were some long lineups at Terminal 1 Tuesday morning, but they seem to have subsided,” he said.
The security screeners are employed by Garda World Security Corp., a company contracted by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority to conduct pre-boarding screening. For the past week, they have been conducting intermittent slowdowns of screenings, causing long line ups at Pearson. The job action started last Wednesday evening, and led to major delays at the airport last week.
Lisa Raitt, the federal minister of labour, appointed a mediator to the dispute last week, and urged both sides to respect a ruling by the Canadian Industrial Relations Board, which deemed the slowdowns an illegal job action.