Special $ 20 million bonus for Air Canada executives

The Air Canada Flight Attendants Union and governance specialist Montreal Airlines on Monday denied paying $ 20 million in “incentive bonuses” to its executives and leaders.

The implementation of these special bonuses will enable Air Canada managers to receive bonuses even if the company does not meet its targets by 2020. Under the standard performance bonus program, they were able to earn up to 45 million million in bonuses, but the company’s net loss of 7 4.7 billion in 2020 made those payments impossible.

For governance expert Michelle Nadeau, these bonuses were simply “unacceptable”, especially when thousands of Air Canada employees had to make “sacrifices”.

“We are disappointed,” Wesley Lesowski of the Canadian Union of Public Employees responded, referring to the airline’s flight attendants.

In addition, Air Canada has decided to grant “praise and commendation rights” to former CEO Colin Rovins and four other big bosses, with the goal of allowing them to “get back” some of the salary they lost last year due to the epidemic.

Finally, the board used its “discretionary power” to exclude the year 2020 from the calculation of long-term incentive bonuses intended for its executives from 2017 to 2020. The value of these bonuses, including the year 2020, would be wiped out. .

Over 9 million for Rovins

In the end, Mr Rovins received almost $ 9.3 million in 2020, up from $ 9.99 million in 2019. For his part, former chief financial officer Michael Russo was eligible for $ 9 2.9 million, up from 4 4.4 million in 2019. Mr Russo became CEO in February.

Since the onset of the epidemic, Air Canada has laid off more than half or 21,700 of its employees and received over $ 50,650 million in wage subsidies.

In April, Ottawa Air provided $ 9.59 billion in assistance to Canada. The agreement is that senior executives will not be able to benefit from compensation in excess of $ 1 million (excluding pension plans and severance pay).