A three-day strike by flight attendants at Air Canada, which crippled the airline and left tens of thousands of passengers stranded, may be over, but that doesn’t mean crew members are happy with the tentative agreement their union negotiated with the Canadian flag carrier.
At the heart of growing disquiet amongst more than 10,000 flight attendants at Air Canada and its leisure subsidiary Air Canada Rouge is the concern that ‘unpaid work’ will continue despite promises that the new contract would bring this practice to an end.
Voting on the tentative agreement is set to open on August 27, and it will now be up to the CUPE union to convince its members that this deal really is the best that could be achieved.
Flight attendants began their strike on August 16 and defied legal orders from the Canadian government to return to work over fears the walkout would damage the country’s economy.
In the end, Air Canada was forced to return to the negotiating table, and a deal was struck in the early hours of August 19. The centerpiece of this deal is a promise from Air Canada to end mandatory unpaid work, although the devil is in the details.
Traditionally, flight attendants at North American airlines have only been paid for the hours they spend in the air. They start earning money from the moment the aircraft pushes back from the gate to the point at which the plane arrives at its destination.
For decades, this was considered the way of things, although in recent years, there has been a push among flight attendant unions to end the status quo.
It was, however, non-unionized Delta Air Lines that became the first North American carrier to pay flight attendants for time spent on the ground in the form of ‘boarding pay,’ which, as the name suggests, pays flight attendants for time spent boarding but only at half the usual hourly flying pay.
Boarding pay has since been adopted at American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and SkyWest, although at a lower rate than what flight attendants earn for their hourly flying pay.
Air Canada had also offered boarding pay at half the normal flying rate, cementing the 50% boarding pay formula as the de facto method, although the strike forced the airline to improve its offer.
The tentative agreement still involves boarding pay at half the usual flying rate in the first year of the deal, but this then rises to 60% in 2026, 65% in 2027, and then tops out at 70% in 2028.
There are, however, calls amongst flight attendants for boarding pay to be paid at the full hourly flying rate, while others are angry that the deal only introduces pay for boarding and not all the other time that crew members spend on the ground, but on-duty and at work.
This is a similar issue that is facing flight attendants at United Airlines, where their union had told them they would be fighting for ‘ground duty pay’ rather than the more restrictive ‘boarding pay.’
When a tentative agreement was eventually reached, however, the union had accepted a proposal for boarding pay at half the hourly flying rate. Flight attendants rejected the deal, although the union is trying to get to the bottom of why its members were so unhappy with the proposal.
The current pay dispute at Air Canada could be the start of a major change in how flight attendants at North American carriers are paid. Rather than inflated flying pay, flight attendants could start getting paid for all the time they spend at work, although wages would be distributed across different duties.
This shift would likely benefit newer flight attendants who generally work more short-haul flights with multiple flight sectors per day, including ground time between flights, as well as several boarding periods in a single shift.
Matt’s Take
The strike at Air Canada has brought widespread attention to the reality of how flight attendants in North America can spend hours at work each week unpaid. There seems to be support amongst the public to end this pay system, although exactly how this happens in practice is very much open to debate.
