Ottawa airport taxi
drivers locked out
OTTAWA — Taxi drivers serving pas-
sengers at the Ottawa Airport have been
locked out.
According to Unifor, the lockout came in
spite of a commitment from union mem-
bers to continue serving customers during
the current dispute with the employer.
"We had set up a job action that affected
the employer, while continuing to provide a
vital service to the public," said Unifor na-
tional representative Harry Ghadban.
The drivers — members of Unifor Local
1688 — have been in a legal strike position
since Aug. 1 in a dispute over dispatch fees.
The airport authority recently called for an
increase in fees, which would add to the
cost of taking a taxi.
In protest, the Unifor members stopped
paying their dispatch fees as of Aug. 1 but
continued to pick up passengers at the air-
port.
"Taxi drivers are already facing enough
challenges, including from illegal taxi ser-
vices, without driving customers away with
increased fees," Ghadban said.
"The airport authority is the catalyst for
this."
Effective Aug. 11, the employer disabled
the transponders drivers use to open gates
at the airport and said union drivers who
refuse to pay the fee will no longer be per-
mitted to pick up passengers at the airport.
Western Canada
leads in first-
quarter job
vacancies: Survey
OTTAWA (Reuters) — Resource-rich
western Canada led the country in job va-
cancies in the first quarter, a new survey
from Statistics Canada showed.
The federal agency's largest business
survey showed an estimated 399,900 job
vacancies in the quarter, with a job vacancy
rate of 2.6 per cent.
By comparison, Statistics Canada's la-
bour force survey had shown an average of
1.3 million unemployed people in the quar-
ter.
Among the provinces, oil-producer Al-
berta showed the highest vacancy rate, of
3.5 per cent, followed by British Columbia
at 3.3 per cent and Saskatchewan at three
per cent.
The largest province, Ontario, was ex-
actly at the 2.6 per cent national average.
Job vacancies in manufacturing tended to
be concentrated there.
A Statistics Canada official said one
benefit of the new business survey will be
enabling individual Canadians to discern
in detail in which locations the greatest
demand is for their particular
o c c u p a t i o n a l
skills.
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LABOUR LENS
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