As thousands of air passengers in Canada and around the world scrambled to adjust travel plans ahead of a potential strike by Air Canada’s flight attendants, the workers’ union rejected a request from the company to enter government arbitration to avoid the walkout.
Patty Hajdu, the country’s labor minister, had given the union until noon Eastern time on Friday to respond to a request from Air Canada to settle the labor dispute through binding arbitration.
But Hugh Pouliot, a spokesman for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, of which Air Canada’s flight attendants are members, said on Friday it had formally rejected the request.
“We will not surrender our constitutionally protected right to strike,” he said.
Air Canada had also asked the government to force the union to enter arbitration. Government-mandated arbitration, however, is normally used to end long and disruptive walkouts, not to block a strike before it begins.
After the union rejected the company’s request, a spokeswoman for Ms. Hajdu did not indicate whether the ministry would take that step, saying only, “We strongly urge the parties to work with federal mediators and get a deal done.”
She had continually urged the two sides to resume direct negotiations, which broke down over wages and the union’s demand that the company pay attendants for the hours worked before planes take off and after flights land, known as groundwork. Arbitrators rarely introduce major new changes — like groundwork compensation — in contracts they impose.
Air Canada began canceling flights on Thursday, after the union issued a notice that it intended to strike at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday. The airline responded with a similar notice, saying that it planned to lock out the flight attendants at the same time.
Cirium, a flight data company, said 165 flights had been canceled by midday Friday, up from 32 in the morning. The airline is planning to cancel all 700 flights that it directly operates, which carry about 130,000 people each day, by Saturday morning. In addition to Canadian routes, the carrier flies to about 65 countries.
While Air Canada has said that it would try to rebook passengers on other airlines, the combination of its dominance in the Canadian market and the peak summer travel period will make rebooking impossible for many people. Canada’s vast distances make ground travel an impractical substitute for many travelers.
The union representing Air Canada’s 10,000 flight attendants strongly opposed Air Canada’s initial request to resolve their contract talks by voluntary arbitration.
David J. Doorey, a professor of workplace law at York University in Toronto, said the government’s use of arbitration to avert disruptive strikes was already being challenged in court by the Teamsters. He anticipates that if the flight attendants were prevented from striking, their union would join that legal action and the courts were likely to rule against the government.
Employers, he said, have come to expect the government to intervene to block disruptive strikes. That has given companies the sense that “there is good reason to hold back on making your best offer,” he said, adding that they think they “can do better before an arbitrator.”
A poll released on Friday by the Angus Reid Institute, a nonprofit public opinion firm, found that 59 percent of Canadians believe that Air Canada should pay its attendants the full hourly rate for work they do on the ground. And 43 percent of respondents indicated that they would pay higher airfares to make that possible, although most of the people in that group would not accept increases over five percent.
Jan Wong, an academic, journalist and author, received a series of texts from Air Canada on Thursday initially indicating that her Thursday flight back to Toronto from Fredericton, New Brunswick, had been delayed because of mechanical issues. Then the texts indicated it had been canceled “because a labor disruption is impacting our operations.”
She said she initially considered renting a car, but rejected the idea because it would have been a 17-hour trip — assuming she could find a rental.
She was able to find a seat on another airline but not until Tuesday. Air Canada, apparently believing that it will still be flying, has booked her on one of its planes that day, as well.
“What a confusing mess,” she said.
Niraj Chokshi contributed reporting from New York.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times. A Windsor, Ontario, native now based in Ottawa, he has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
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