Flight attendants at Air Canada have voted overwhelmingly to take part in strike action unless the airline significantly improves its offer to struggling crew members in protracted contract negotiations.
On Tuesday, the CUPE union, which represents more than 10,000 flight attendants at Air Canada and its leisure subsidiary Air Canada Rouge, announced that its members had voted 99.7% in favor of strike action.
“The company would rather drag their feet than negotiate on the things that matter to our members,” slammed Wesley Lesosky, president of the Air Canada Component of CUPE.
“Now, flight attendants have had a chance to weigh in and tell the company it’s time to get serious about negotiating.”
Flight attendants are particularly frustrated at the amount of unpaid work they have to do, which includes completing safety checks, getting the aircraft cabin ready, boarding, and deplaning.
The union has demanded that Air Canada start paying flight attendants from the moment they start work, rather than the traditional method of basing pay on ‘block hours’, which is calculated from the time that the plane pushes back from the gate to the time it arrives at its destination.
Air Canada has, so far, refused to entertain the idea of introducing ‘boarding pay’, which is slowly being adopted at other North American airlines, including Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta.
CUPE argues that this refusal is entrenching the gender pay gap amongst flight attendants, as the majority of crew members are female.
Flight attendants are also fighting for big pay rises, given the fact that inflation has
Inflation has ballooned by 169% since 2000. In that time, however, wages for new-hire Air Canada flight attendants have risen by just 10%.
In fact, the union claims a full-time entry-level flight attendant earns around $10,000 less than a full-time worker on the federal minimum wage.
“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,” blasted Lesosky.
“Air Canada has raked in billions in profits in the past few years. They can afford to pay us fairly without raising costs for the public.”
Unlike in the United States, the threat of Air Canada flight attendants actually going on strike is very real. Once a strike is approved, flight attendants don’t need to seek permission from a third party to take part in a walkout, although there are minimum notice periods.
The Supreme Court of Canada recognizes the right to strike as an “indispensable component” of collective bargaining, so as long as the CUPE provides Air Canada with fair warning, flight attendants will be allowed to go on strike.
Based on the current state of play between Air Canada and the union, flight attendants could legally go on strike from August 16.
Air Canada would be banned from calling in replacement workers to take on the job of flight attendants.
Given the fact that this strike is very real, CUPE is, no doubt, hoping the ballot result will persuade Air Canada to come back to the bargaining table. If last-ditch negotiations fail, however, widespread disruption could be felt across Air Canada’s network.
The airline has yet to publish details of how it would deal with a flight attendant walkout.
