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Higher labour costs could affect Porter’s plan to expand its offerings out of Toronto’s Billy Bishop airport.Chris Young/The Globe and Mail

Baggage handlers at Porter Airlines Inc. have agreed to join Unifor, marking a major win for Canada's largest private-sector union, but potentially loading the mainly non-union airline with higher labour costs as it faces growing competition.

About 80 Porter baggage handlers have agreed to join Unifor, the union created last year by the merger of the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.

Unifor was certified as the bargaining agent for the employees by the Canada Industrial Relations Board earlier this week.

"It's huge," said Unifor president Jerry Dias, who has made enlarging the union through organizing drives at Porter, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Inc. and other non-union or mostly non-union companies a key priority since he became the first president of the merged union.

The union mounted a six-month organizing drive, Mr. Dias said Thursday. "We had an organizing drive years ago that went nowhere," he said.

The next step for the union will be to sign a first contract with privately-owned Porter, which is coming under increasing competitive pressure.

"We are continuing with business as usual," Porter spokesman Brad Cicero said Thursday. "At the appropriate time, management and the union will meet to start negotiations toward a first collective agreement."

WestJet Airlines Ltd., a non-union carrier, has recently expanded its lower-cost Encore service to Central and Eastern Canada.

The Encore service uses the same Q400 turboprop airplanes Porter uses to fly passengers in the Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa triangle as well as to other Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada destinations and select U.S. cities.

Porter is mainly non-union. A small local of the Canadian Office and Professional Employees union represents refuellers at the Billy Bishop airport on the Toronto islands where Porter operates.

The airline's baggage handlers are paid between $12 and $16 an hour. Average wages in the airline sector as a whole are about $24 an hour, according to a Unifor position paper on the industry.

In a 2010 prospectus for an initial public offering of shares that was later pulled, Porter said wages and salaries represented about 21 per cent of its costs.

"Porter endeavours to control its costs by maintaining a high level of efficiency in respect of its employment and labour resources," the prospectus said.

While it deals with the increased competition from WestJet, which has no landing or take-off slots at Billy Bishop, Porter is also trying to expand and fly jets out of the island airport. It has signed a conditional deal to buy CS100 jets from Bombardier Inc., which would allow it to expand nationally in Canada and increase its range to U.S. and Caribbean destinations.

Air Canada has a limited number of slots at Billy Bishop.

The expansion plan and the purchase of the planes will not go ahead unless Toronto City Council and the Toronto Port Authority agree to allow the runway at Billy Bishop to be extended into Lake Ontario to permit jets to take off and land.

The plan to extend the runway is being fought by residents of the Toronto islands, boaters, environmentalists and other groups.

Unifor has about 11,000 members at various airlines and Nav Canada, which runs the country's air traffic control and air navigation systems. It represents baggage handlers, maintenance employees, counter agents and airline catering employees.

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