1,350 workers on strike at huge jet-building plant near Pearson Airport in Mississauga, Ontario

Some 1,350 aircraft assembly workers at a huge new jet-building plant at Pearson Airport in Mississauga remain on strike today after their union and the company failed to hammer out a collective agreement on the weekend.

Unifor, which represents the workers, and Montreal-based Bombardier didn’t get a deal done prior to a Saturday evening strike deadline, pushing workers to the picket lines on Sunday.

The union said in a news release that negotiations with the employer continued through the night and late into the morning

Bargaining was expected to resume early Monday morning between the two sides.

The union said both parties are committed to continuing the negotiation process.

Mark Masluch, a spokesman for Bombardier, said the collective goal is to “swiftly reach a mutually beneficial agreement.”

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Bombardier’s new Global Manufacturing Centre, described by the Montreal-based international firm as a “state-of-the-art” final assembly plant for its line of Global business aircraft, completed its move from Downsview and opened at Pearson a few months ago.

The 770,000-sq.-ft. plant, the largest standalone structure built in the past two decades at Pearson Airport, cost in the neighbourhood of $670 million to construct. It houses several thousand workers whose finished products are sold around the globe.

As of late March, all operations had been moved to Pearson after the recent final closing of the old Downsview plant.

Already building private jets considered to be among some of the fastest in the world, Bombardier has said it will soon be building “the fastest” such aircraft.

Set to come off the production line in 2025, the company’s new flagship Global 8000 aircraft will whisk passengers around the world at a speed approaching the speed of sound and greater than that of any other private jet currently in the skies, company execs said earlier.

At $78 million apiece and with room for 19 passengers, the Global 8000 will fly at a top operating speed of Mach .94 (about 1,160 km/h). Mach 1, the speed of sound, translates to 1,234 km/h.

During a test flight in May 2021 observed by a NASA-operated Boeing F-18 fighter, the new Bombardier private jet broke the sound barrier when it recorded a speed of Mach 1.015, or 1,243 km/h.

— with files from The Canadian Press

(Cover photo: Bombardier)