More than 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants are due to go on strike in the early hours of Saturday over a pay dispute, bringing travel chaos to hundreds of thousands of customers at the height of the summer vacation season.
The airline says it has begun canceling flights as it prepares for a shutdown.
Why It Matters
Air Canada has more than 40,000 employees, with more than 250 aircraft traveling to 200 destinations in over 65 countries.
The flight attendants’ strike will affect more than 130,000 customers a day—including 25,000 Canadians daily who are attempting to come home from abroad—and now at risk of being stranded, the airline said.
The strike comes as more Canadians are avoiding the United States this year because of diplomatic tensions and taking vacations at home, putting extra pressure on Air Canada’s domestic routes.
What To Know
Mark Nasr, Air Canada’s chief operations officer, said that cancellations would go from “several dozens” on Thursday, to some 500 by the end of Friday, to the airline being “completely grounded” at the start of the strike on Saturday, in the absence of a resolution.
“The impact that this is going to have on our customers is profound and we are going to do everything possible to support them through it,” Nasr said at a news conference.
“Air Canada is a very complex system … It’s simply not the kind of system we can start or stop at the push of a button. So in order to have a safe and orderly wind down, we need to begin now. That includes a first set of cancellations processed this morning, affecting largely long-haul international flights due to depart tonight, providing as much advance notice as we can.”
“The cancellations will proceed and grow in magnitude … By the time we get to 1 a.m. on Saturday morning, we’ll be completely grounded,” Nasr added.
The news conference ended early, after members of the union stood silently, holding signs that read “UnfAir Canada” and “Poverty wages = UnCanadian.”
Members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) airline division voted overwhelmingly this week to back a strike to press their demand for fair pay, in particular for the unpaid work performed by its flight attendants. The airline only pays for hours in the air, meaning preflight procedures like safety checks are unpaid.
“For the past nine months, we have put forward solid, data-driven proposals on wages and unpaid work, all rooted in fairness and industry standards,” said Wesley Lesosky, president of the Air Canada Component of CUPE.
“Air Canada’s response to our proposals makes one thing clear: they are not interested in resolving these critical issues,” he added.
With negotiations bogged down over an airline offer, including a 38 percent pay increase over four years, Air Canada proposed resolving the dispute using an arbitrator but the union declined the suggestion.
Air Canada says it will offer refunds on tickets and try to book customers on other flights, but there are few available seats in the summer rush.
What People Are Saying
Arielle Meloul-Wechsler, Air Canada’s executive vice president for human resources, at Thursday’s briefing: “We are extremely disappointed by CUPE’s decision which threatens to disrupt the travel plans of more than 130,000 customers a day.”
Lesosky, in a statement: “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.”
What Happens Next
In the absence of a last-minute resolution of the dispute, the airline will be grounded in the early hours of Saturday.
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