June 27, 2025

Participants for AMFA
Bret Oestreich – National President
Lee Seham – Acting Committee Chair
Justin Lang – Airline Representative
Michael Emery – Negotiator-at-Large
Samuel Seham – Legal Counsel

Participants for Jazz Aviation
Kirk Newhook – VP Employee Relations
Suzanne Asseff – Director Employee Relations
Kal Rebin – VP Maintenance
Mark Lenglet – Director Line Maintenance
Maze Hobeyn – Director Components & Stores
Stephen Boa – Manager Labour Relations
Christine Stolarz – Employee Relations Admin/Analyst 

The AMFA-Jazz Line Negotiating Committee (the “Committee”) is providing this update to the membership at Jazz Aviation (Jazz). This is the only official source of negotiating communications.

On June 23-25, 2025, Jazz and AMFA representatives met in Toronto, ON, to initiate collective agreement negotiations. The negotiations were led by AMFA General Counsel Lee Seham and Jazz VP Employee Relations Kirk Newhook.  During the June 23-24 sessions, rank-and-file observers sat in on the negotiations and contributed valuable information during Committee caucuses.

On June 23, the negotiating participants introduced themselves. Your Committee explained AMFA’s history as a trade union dedicated to promoting the craft of skilled TechOp employees and addressing the complicity of predecessor trade unions in suppressing the wages of Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (AMEs) to below market levels.

Your Committee also emphasized that, as a craft trade union, a core objective of AMFA is to promote aviation safety. The Committee further advised that, since our members have been under the same agreement for over ten (10) years, it would be necessary to address a number of contract language issues.

Building on the progress made by the JTS Committee during negotiations on June 10-12, the Jazz Line Committee reached agreement on the following eight (8) of the twenty-one (21) articles in the existing collective agreement. [1]

Article 1 – Purpose of Agreement and Definitions
Article 3 – Management’s Rights
Article 9 – Probation
Article 12 – Transfers and Filling of Vacancies
Article 17 – Health and Safety
Article 18 – Union-Management Communications
Article 20 – Check-Off
Article 21 – Duration

A tentative agreement, or “TA,” reflects the Parties’ intention to incorporate the article agreed to into a comprehensive collective agreement absent unforeseen circumstances. Your Committee selected these articles because they represented what is commonly referred to as “low-hanging fruit,” i.e., articles with little or no economic impact that required only moderate changes to the existing contractual provisions.  Tangible improvements obtained in these TA’d articles include:

• An increase from $3,000 to $4,000 per month in Company contributions to the paid education fund;
• An extension of the annual two percent increases in the footwear allowance;
• New language providing that, for all shifts, no employee will be required to work alone other than on low-risk tasks;
• New language that two bargaining unit employees will be required for any work that is dangerous or involves out-of-base assignments to non-Jazz maintenance bases;
• Compensation for pre and post flight travel time to and from a relief or special assignments to be increased from one to four hours;
• Removal of the contractual automatic renewal language with the Company and AMFA both inclined, at this time, to pursue a three-year agreement.

On June 25, the Jazz Line and JTS Committees engaged in joint negotiations with the Company, which resulted in a TA for Article 16 - Grievance Procedure, Arbitration, Discipline, Suspension, Discharge. Tangible improvements obtained in the new Article 16 include:

• Letters of Expectation and all disciplinary letters will be removed from an employee’s personnel record after one (1) year unless they involve rescinded terminations, suspensions, or warnings for incidents involving aircraft/property damage or personal injury, which case they will be removed in two (2) years;
• An employee will be given advance notice of the allegations against him/her prior to any disciplinary investigative hearing; and,
• The Union obtained the contractual right to have written transcripts taken at arbitration hearings.

Since arbitration hearings may determine important contractual and statutory rights for our members, AMFA pressed hard for the adoption of this last provision. Although the keeping of such transcripts is standard practice in the U.S. airline industry, no other airline contract that the Committee has reviewed contains such a provision. Consequently, the Company only agreed to written transcripts with two provisos: (a) that the arbitrator had the right to object to the keep of transcripts, and (b) the Company retains the provision after two years or three arbitrations, whichever comes later. The two AMFA Committees agreed to these limitations in order to obtain this new benefit and close out the article.

In addition, your Committee submitted its proposals for the following articles:

• Article 4 – Scope of Agreement, Classifications and Positions
• Article 7 – Overtime
• Article 8 – Relief and Special Assignments
• Article 11 – Leaves of Absence and Sick Leave
• Article 13 – Statutory Holidays
• Article 19 – General

The tone of the negotiations has remained cordial and professional; however, we note that the Parties have yet to address core economic issues. The Company recognized that employee retention was an issue and that compensation must be enhanced but that, due to constraints arising from its Capacity Purchase Agreement, it may have to “justify” wage increases with commensurate increases in “efficiency.”

Stay engaged, remain informed, and continue to support the Negotiating Committee as that support increases the ability to bargain a collective agreement that your hard work deserves. Your AMFA representatives will provide regular updates throughout the negotiating process. Thank you for your support.

Fraternally,

AMFA-Jazz Line Negotiating Committee