Galley Gossip: I heard that the company gave increases in salary to non union members due to inflation but did not to unionized groups at WestJet… it is my understanding that they could have opened up the collective agreement and still could have given us the same. First of all did they give non union employees an increase in pay due to inflation? And Secondly could they not have done the same for union members?

Answer: The Company has the ability to change parameters of non-unionized workers at any time.  When in a Unionized environment, the Union and Company are locked into the terms of the bargained Collective Agreement.  While if both sides agree, articles can be changed.  How bargaining works though, is that items of value are saved until the bargaining dates, due to creating leverage for other items that maybe desired from either party.  Monetary items are "big ticket" leverage items.