It is time to ask an uncomfortable question: should airlines remain unionized?

Flight attendants, mechanics, and pilots deserve to be paid fairly for demanding and highly skilled work. But good public policy requires us to examine not only the benefits of wage increases, but also their full economic and social costs.

This week’s WestJet disruption illustrates the scale of the losses that rarely appear in official calculations of the cost of a labour dispute. Yet, they are real economic costs transferred from employers and employees to innocent travellers, and, ultimately, to society, writes Akolisa Ufodike. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Opinion

BY AKOLISA UFODIKE

August 4, 2026

Every time an airline labour dispute erupts, the public is told that the conflict is between employees and management. It is not.

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