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Mr. Phillip Underwood
President and Chief Executive Officer
Magellan Aerospace Corporation
3160 Derry Road East
Mississauga, Ontario L4T 1A9
Mr. Underwood,
Unifor is Canada’s largest private-sector union, representing more than 320,000 members across Canada, including 11,000 workers across the aerospace value chain: manufacturing, maintenance, repair and overhaul, avionics, composites, propulsion and advanced systems. That membership includes workers at Magellan’s own operations in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
We are writing about the labour relations situation at Magellan Aerospace (India) Pvt. Ltd., at the Hi-Tech Defence and Aerospace Park in Devanahalli, near Bengaluru. We understand that employees at the facility democratically formed the Magellan Aerospace Employees Union in February 2025 and have since sought recognition and a negotiated agreement. The union has stated that its charter of demands has gone unaddressed, that management has repeatedly failed to participate in conciliation proceedings before the Labour Commissioner, and that on June 30, 2026, the matter was referred to the Labour Court for adjudication. The union has also raised concerns about working hours that exceed local labour laws, as well as unjust transfers and terminations.
We ask Magellan to do at Devanahalli what it does elsewhere: recognize the workers’ freely chosen representatives and engage in good-faith dialogue. Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are fundamental labour rights, affirmed in the International Labour Organization (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, to which India is bound as a member, and Canada has ratified. Similar principles are enshrined in the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct, to which Canada subscribes. The workers we represent at Magellan in Canada exercise these rights; the company’s employees in India should be able to count on the same standard from the same employer.
We raise this with our own members squarely in mind. Some of the work now performed at Devanahalli was offshored directly from Magellan’s operations in Winnipeg. A company that moves Canadian jobs abroad and then resists the very rights its Canadian employees exercise drives standards down in both places at once. The good, unionized jobs our members hold at Magellan in Canada are secure only when the same standards apply wherever the company operates, and defending the workers at Devanahalli is inseparable from defending good jobs here at home.
This is also a matter of the values Canada brings to its trade. Canada actively championed this facility: its 2017 groundbreaking was attended by Canada’s Minister of International Trade at the time, who described the investment as part of Canada’s mutually beneficial trade agenda with India. As Canada now works to deepen that relationship, the credibility of reciprocal and respectful commerce depends on Canadian companies modelling the standards Canada expects of its trading partners. Respect for workers’ rights is not a barrier to trade, it is the foundation of the fair, rules-based trade Unifor has consistently defended, including in our response to recent tariff pressures. Those rights should travel with a Canadian company wherever it operates.
We are copying this letter to the Canadian minister responsible for labour, and we encourage the Government of Canada to remind Canadian enterprises that Canadian and international labour standards should be upheld across all of their operations. This letter carries the full support of the Unifor Aerospace Council. We would welcome Magellan’s confirmation that it will engage constructively with its employees at Devanahalli, and we are glad to make ourselves available to discuss.
In solidarity,
Lana Payne
National President
Daniel Cloutier
Québec Director
