More than ten thousand Air Canada flight attendants could soon be on strike if a deal isn’t reached by August 16.
In one of the strongest strike mandate votes in recent Canadian history, 99.7 percent of members in the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) airline division opted to authorize a strike, with a turnout of 94.6 percent. With this overwhelming strike authorization in hand, the union is now headed back to the bargaining table to make one last push for a deal before picket lines go up.
Flight attendants at Air Canada and its “leisure airline,” Air Canada Rouge, are fighting for an end to unpaid work and poverty wages at the country’s largest airline. Despite months of negotiations, Air Canada has yet to make meaningful movement on these union priorities. Flight attendants are clearly fed up.
Workers have already waited an extraordinary length of time for change. Their most recent contract, which expired last year, had been in place for a full ten years — including during the pandemic, when the airline received huge government subsidies while flight attendants faced a range of hardships.
Since the beginning of this year, CUPE and Air Canada have been in an especially protracted round of negotiations. After failing to renegotiate the ten-year expired collective agreement, in mid-May, the union filed for conciliation with the federal minister of labor, citing a bargaining impasse.
As a top issue, CUPE is seeking to address the inordinate amount of unpaid work performed by its flight attendant members. Workers are paid only when planes are in the air and frequently receive no compensation for vital work, such as performing safety checks, attending to onboard medical and safety emergencies, and assisting passengers during boarding and deplaning.
For over two years, CUPE flight attendants across multiple airlines have been engaged in a campaign to raise awareness about unpaid work. In April 2023, for example, they held a national day of action at airports in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver, calling on airlines and the government to end unpaid work and reform labor rules.
According to survey data collected by the union between December 2023 and January 2024, flight attendants perform on average close to an extra week worth of uncompensated overtime every month. Nearly 99 percent of flight attendants reported receiving no pay while assisting passengers disembarking planes, and 98 percent said they were unpaid when planes are held at the gate. Additionally, three-quarters of members reported that they were only paid partial wages when attending mandatory training, even though airlines and the federal government require such upgrades several times per year.
The union also argues that because the majority of flight attendants are women, this unpaid work contributes to the persistence of a gender pay gap. As CUPE puts it, this arrangement “subsidizes the company’s profits at the expense of frontline workers.”
Ahead of this bargaining round, the union launched its “Unfair Canada” campaign to take the fight against unpaid work and poor compensation directly to Air Canada.
Even the paid portion of flight attendants’ time is undercompensated. According to CUPE’s figures, inflation has risen by 169 percent over the last twenty-five years, while entry-level flight attendant pay has grown by only 10 percent — a measly $3 per hour. Once unpaid hours are factored in, new flight attendants at Air Canada earn less than the federal minimum wage annually. Wages, the union argues, have clearly not kept pace with the cost of living.
The union is also seeking to build connections between flight attendants and disgruntled passengers. As Wesley Lesosky, president of the Air Canada Component of CUPE, put it in a union press release, “While the airline continues to slap junk fees on flyers and gouge the public, they’re also exploiting their own employees by severely underpaying flight attendants or refusing to pay them at all for safety-critical aspects of our jobs.” As frontline workers in an industry often rife with customer dissatisfaction, passenger support may prove decisive for a union victory.
Canada’s largest airline is no stranger to labor strife. In 2012, wildcat strikes erupted among various Air Canada employees protesting the Conservative government’s use of back-to-work legislation against pilots, as well as against flight attendants and customer service representatives the year before. Bag handlers and ground crews illegally walked off the job, while pilots grounded dozens of flights by engaging in a “sick-out.”
Last year, Air Canada pilots reached an eleventh-hour deal, narrowly averting a work stoppage after 98 percent of Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) members voted to strike. Despite the union securing a 42 percent wage hike over four years, only 67 percent of members voted in favor of the contract, demonstrating both the frustration and raised expectations of pilots.
Air Canada flight attendants now have a chance to build on the success of pilots. By mobilizing a supermajority of members to authorize a strike, the union is poised to secure long-deserved gains for this essential, female-dominated workforce. As well, CUPE’s contract covering nearly 3,000 flight attendants at WestJet expires in December, making the precedent set at Air Canada that much more important
Air Canada has raked in billions post-pandemic, while its flight attendants were locked into an extended contract and living on subpar wages. Meanwhile, executive compensation at the airline continued to climb, surpassing pre-pandemic levels. The president and CEO, Michael Rousseau, alone took home nearly $12.5 million last year.
One of Canada’s most profitable companies can afford to pay flight attendants fairly and for all hours worked. If workers walk off the job, the company may finally be forced to do just that.
Great Job Adam D. K. King & the Team @ Jacobin Source link for sharing this story.
