Air Canada, the country’s largest carrier, is set to resume service after reaching an agreement with its unionised flight attendants.
The deal, reached early on Tuesday morning, ends the first strike by the airline’s cabin crew in nearly 40 years.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) issued a statement explaining that its mediation with the airline and its low-cost affiliate Air Canada Rouge had arrived at a successful conclusion.
“Unpaid work is over. We have reclaimed our voice and our power,” the union wrote. “When our rights were taken away, we stood strong, we fought back — and we secured a tentative agreement that our members can vote on.”
The walkout began on Saturday and lasted nearly four days, leading to disruptions in travel for the nearly 130,000 travellers each day who take Air Canada.
The strike also forced the company to withdraw its third-quarter and full-year earnings guidance. In early trading on Tuesday morning, in the wake of the news that the strike had ended, shares of Air Canada rose four percent. But they had lost approximately 14 percent of their value so far this year.
The carrier said it would gradually resume operations, with flights taking off once again by Tuesday evening.
Air Canada warned, however, that a full restoration of its services may require a week or more. Some flights will remain cancelled over the next seven to 10 days while the flight schedules are stabilised.
Customers with cancelled flights can choose between a refund, travel credit or rebooking on another airline.
What was the dispute about?
CUPE represents nearly 10,400 flight attendants employed by Air Canada, and the union had been negotiating for months with the airline to address issues including “unpaid work, work rules, and poverty-level wages”.
The union pointed out that wages had not kept pace with the cost of inflation and that cabin crew members were not offered “ground pay”: compensation for all the work done before a flight’s doors close and after a flight lands.
That includes no pay for getting passengers boarded, assisting travellers with baggage and seating, and conducting safety checks.
CUPE noted last week that 99.7 percent of its members voted in favour of the strike.
In announcing the end of the walkout, CUPE explained that negotiations had stretched from 7pm local time (23:00 GMT) on Monday to 4:23am (08:23 GMT) the next day.
“We are required to advise our membership that we must fully cooperate with resumption of operations,” the union wrote in an announcement on Facebook.
A tense showdown
Until the deal was announced, it was not clear whether the impasse would be quickly resolved. On Monday, Mark Hancock, CUPE’s national president, said there was “no limit” to his commitment to the fight.
“We’re going to stay strong. We’re going to stay committed to making sure those workers can do the job that they love doing and actually be able to afford a roof over their heads,” Hancock said. “And if it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it.”
In a rare act of defiance, the union remained on strike even after the Canada Industrial Relations Board, a federal labour board, declared its action unlawful.
On Monday, the board called for the flight attendants to return to work and for the union to submit to arbitration.
But with the flight attendants refusing, a three-way standoff developed between the workers, the company and the government.
The union had asked the government not to intervene, in case it gave the airline the upper hand in negotiations.
In an apparent effort to address that argument, Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu also promised on Monday to place pressure on Air Canada by investigating allegations of unpaid work in the airline sector.
“I’ve also heard the allegations of unpaid work. It’s unacceptable. Nobody should work for free in this country. In fact, we expect to get paid for the work we perform,” Hajdu said in a video on social media.
“That’s why I’ve ordered a probe into the allegation of unpaid work in the airline sector. We will start this probe immediately.”
In recent years, unions in the aerospace, construction, airline and rail sectors have renewed their efforts to push employers for higher pay, improved conditions and better benefits amid a tight labour market.
Travellers express frustration
While Air Canada works towards resuming full service, travellers have expressed frustration with the ongoing flight cancellations.
As of Monday, the analytics firm Cirium estimated that nearly 1,219 domestic flights in Canada and 1,339 international flights had been suspended since Thursday as a result of the strike.
Retiree Klaus Hickman was among those who missed a flight to Toronto earlier in the week. While he rebooked on another airline, he was concerned about returning to Calgary on time for a connecting flight to Germany.
Hickman sympathises with workers demanding better pay but is worried about his own health and travel challenges.
“They want to get more money to survive. And so it is with everybody else,” he said.
Canada’s largest air hub, Pearson International Airport in Toronto, said it would call up extra employees to help as Air Canada restarts its services this week.
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