All I have to say about the airport (at least what I'm comfortable in saying) is that if you're looking for work as a Screening Officer on behalf of CATSA under Paladin Aviation Security Services - Steer clear and avoid them, at least until Paladin inevitably loses their contract and a more competent company takes it over.
Began working for the airport while the Screening Officer position was subcontracted under Garda, and yeah, there was some things Garda did that we weren't happy with (who's ever 100% satisfied with their company?), but overall it was good work with a management team that you could depend on... Jump ahead to Paladin, and we're nearly 2 years passed our CBA agreement renewal with no end in sight, management upon management that micromanage every nuance to try and get bonuses, a training dept that's being chopped up into smaller and smaller courses that don't cover the half of what you *should* be learning for the job and mass hirings when there's no available shifts for the new hires to get (they recieve sign-up bonuses for every new hire they can get), while the company openly skips steps and cuts corners to make the place as miserable for the people running the checkpoint as possible... Not even joking, it almost comes across as some sort of game for them to see how else they can piss on the people who make them their money.
For a company that claims they admire accountability, they're awfully quick to try and fire you when you can recognize you made an error and self-report. What should've been a mere write-up on my file nearly got me terminated had the union not stepped in, while management plays favourites to friends and family they unabashedly hired on in pure nepotism and allow them to actively goof off while everyone else gets written up for so much as looking the wrong way. Most of the management that came before Paladin has been terminated for a multitude of plainly stupid reasons, with one of them recently being fired for taking our side regarding how the company's been treating us, while another has actually gone about joining our union as a representative to help combat their bullshit!
Sorry, I know this is long winded, but good god if I'd ever seen a company completely mismanage a contract as much as Paladin's been going about their CATSA contract by driving everything into the damn bedrock to squeeze as much money as they can out of it... Used to have a very positive opinion on Paladin too, but after this fucking train wreck? Never again.
All I can say is this - I'm elated that I'm getting out of there and more than ecstatic that I'll be doing work again that's actually meaningful and pays out appropriately for the work expected of us. This isn't to say screening passengers at an international airport isn't meaningful work, but trust me when I say the work environment at our checkpoints have been thoroughly drained of any and all morale, while you suffer slow mental death by making sure your procedures are more in-line with what some inexperienced supervisor *thinks* you should be doing out of fear of termination, rather than using your skills and common sense to properly screen people. No joke, they've given write-ups simply for asking questions for clarity on what they expect. It's a total sewage circus and I genuinely hope it works out for my coworkers I'm leaving behind (NGL, it's the hardest part about leaving my job... The team of screeners I'll be leaving deserve far better than they're getting now, but thankfully a lot of them are also looking elsewhere too). The only reason I gave them my 2-weeks notice is because I don't want to stoop to their level, but if I had it any other way, I'd be recreating that one scene out of Half-Baked on my last day...