YVR or the Vancouver International Airport may face a strike starting this Friday.

The Union of Canadian Transportation Employees and the Public Service Alliance of Canada members may not be on duty this Friday. This could just be the start of a longer strike. It will be around 300 employees who serve at customer care, emergency response, airfield, approach lighting, passenger loading and runway maintenance.

The strike may end up being hugely problematic as it is going to be a long weekend because of Labour Day. Innumerable people will travel in and out of Vancouver. If the strike really happens, one can expect delays at the airport. Nine out of 60 service gateways will break down, which will cause automatic delay in the schedule. The non-working condition of a gate will make one plane wait for one hour in a single hour. This means 24 flights will be delayed in a day, causing a total delay of 24 hours.

On the other hand, the union believes that the members are left with no other choice even though there is an outside chance of last-hour negotiations as there is a scheduled meeting between both the parties later in the week. The union asked the travellers to get in touch with the airlines to be updated about the flight status in order to avoid any potential harassment.

The union is concerned about a number of issues including job protection and flexibility in working hours. The union believes that YVR keeps on refusing any kind of discussion on their demands even though it boasts of being one among the top employers of BC. The union rejects the idea of creating 'season' workers as YVR's new policies suggest the same by weakening the provisions for apprenticeship.

If the strike gets prolonged, there is every possibility that the conference business will get affected this fall. It may even have an influence on the RBC GranFondo Whistler to be held on Sept 7. A substantial number of people are supposed to travel 122km to Whistler from Vancouver for the same.