Security at Vancouver International Airport is compromised by low wages and contracting out, says the union representing 95 per cent of the security workers.

"I think the system at YVR stinks," union representative Ron Fontaine told CBC on Wednesday morning.

The union representing security staff at Vancouver International Airport says its members are underpaid and lack job security.
(CBC)

Security staff at the airport have close to a 100 per cent annual turnover rate because of low wages and a lack of job security, said Fontaine, a representative of the Grand Lodge for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), and as a result security staff are often inexperienced.

"The employees working in security, the turnover rate is astounding out there," said Fontaine, "Those individuals got no security. The people that are providing the first line of defence in our airports have got no security."

Fontaine said just weeks after the union negotiated its first collective agreement with the Vancouver Airport Authority this past summer, the airport put the security contract out to tender.

"Two weeks from now the lowest bidder is going to get it. And that bidder is going to come and try to reduce the benefits, the wages and various things to agree to the contract they underbid," said Fontaine.

Fontaine said he is also concerned that security concerns at the airport will also be compromised by the completion of the new SkyTrain line that is scheduled to connect the airport with Richmond and Vancouver by the end of 2009.

The IAMAW union represents employees who do pre-board screening of passengers and baggage screening, security guards and security escorts for construction workers, and some baggage handlers.

The Vancouver Airport Authority was not available for comment.