More than 100 WestJet employees suing company over vaccine mandates

People are more than ready to move on from COVID-19 restrictions and get back to life as it used to be: no more masks, a return to travel, normalcy in the workplace — but many don’t have that luxury. Many, despite stellar work performances and long careers, were cast aside as undesirables, often without severance and sometimes even without notifications as a result of vaccine mandates.

Airlines were among to worst offenders when it comes to these warrantless firings. WestJet, a company that prides itself on pretending to care, alone terminated hundreds of employees. Some of their stories, which we share in this heartbreaking report, were truly shocking, including employees with decades of experience who worked throughout the onset of COVID-19 being fired without severance. One employee in good standing logged into their benefits page only to see their status had been changed to terminated without them ever being notified.

As airline employees were losing their jobs, we also repeatedly warned that when travel returned, the loss of these principled and hard-working people would devastate air travel. You have no doubt seen that the state of Pearson Airport and other airports around the world have proven that prediction to be true in extremely frustrating fashion for many. It comes as no surprise that the agreeable "go along to get along" employees who were more than happy to comply with mandates are now incapable of addressing the emerging issues we are seeing in air travel. The critical thinkers and problem solvers were all shown the door.

A group of WestJet employees, including those whose stories we shared a little while back in Calgary, are taking a stand and demanding justice. So far over 100 employees have joined together in taking legal action against WestJet. I joined Rob Simpson, a 737 training captain who lost his job over vaccine mandates, to learn more about the efforts of this group of principled former WestJet employees who are not taking this abuse lying down. With growing numbers, their efforts are making it abundantly clear than many of the good people who were thanklessly tossed away aren’t done fighting yet.

The Democracy Fund is also taking legal action against airlines who unjustly terminated employees without severance over vaccine mandates. If you want to make a tax receipt-eligible contribution to their precedent setting legal efforts, you can do so at FightVaccinePassports.com.