Dear NAV Canada

Most of us have already heard about the denial of several Care and Nurturing Leave requests by NAV CANADA for this coming summer in the Montreal ACC and St. Hubert Tower. Emotions are running high throughout the St. Laurent region as a result, and this is happening at a time when frustration and discontent are already at elevated levels following other recent ill-conceived management initiatives and decisions.

Without a doubt, this coming summer will prove to be a significant challenge for this company and for its workforce, particularly since the strain and stress of working many extra hours while short-handed is clearly catching up to people. That strain and stress is felt by employees in their physical, mental, and emotional health and extends beyond them to their families and friends. Almost every single controller and operational employee has suffered a significant negative impact on their social well-being due to years of short staffing culminating in the current more acute crisis. Overtime compensation will never compensate for ill health or years of lost family time. Those costs are real, and they are lasting.  This simple fact is intuitively recognized by controllers and that is why the recent Company actions have struck such a nerve. Controllers may like their overtime, but they love their families and know full well that the time lost with them will be lost forever.

This is a pivotal moment for Nav Canada: choose to stand with your employees, respect their rights, support their families, and hold true to your own espoused values, or, succumb to old instincts to make desperate, short-term decisions that will erode and undermine this company’s ability not only to recover long term, but to truly begin building a culture that is worth being part of. People first, please. Our people. You can’t just say it, you must show it in your actions.

The summer, and indeed years, ahead will be difficult. We have a choice:  we can take on this challenge together, in partnership, supporting each other when difficult decisions need to be made, or, we can retreat into short-term, self-interested decision making which has gotten us to this point in the first place.  And, if we don’t do it together because it is right, then at least let’s do it because we’re smart enough to recognize it didn’t work out very well last time.

Yours Truly,