Over 800 Unvaccinated Air Canada Employees, Placed On Unpaid Leave

Air Canada has made vaccination a mandatory employment requirement

Just as Canadian airports start reopening to allow international travel into the country, Canada’s biggest air carrier suspends over 800 of its workers for not being fully vaccinated.

Air Canada is just one of many corporate entities to make mandatory vaccination a requirement of employment. The airline industry is among those that suffered significant financial losses from the pandemic.

The federal government did what it could to prop them up through financial subsidies, but it is not enough to keep them out of the red. The company is operating a loss of $364 million, compared to an operating loss of $785 million in the third quarter of 2020.

“We are encouraged by the favourable revenue and traffic trends in the third quarter, with strong increases in key passenger geographic segments, a record cargo performance and significant improvements in both Air Canada Vacations and Aeroplan. The combination of these factors, along with effective cost controls, resulted in net cash flow of $153 million for the quarter, materially better than expected and as compared to the third quarter of 2020,” said Michael Rousseau, President and Chief Executive Officer of Air Canada.

Since the start of the year, Air Canada has recalled more than 10,000 employees back to work as it hopes to get back to capacity. The company indicated approximately 800 of its 27,000 employees are on unpaid leave. And over 96 per cent of its cabinet and essential service workers are double vaxxed.

Air Canada’s vaccine policy is in line with that of the federal government and will remain in place as long as the COVID cases continue to be prevalent.