A labor relations board declared a strike by Air Canada’s 10,000 flight attendants illegal on Monday and ordered their union to bring them back to work by midday.
But the Canadian Union of Public Employees said it would continue defying the board’s orders.
“We don’t want Canadians caught in this, but we will not be returning to the skies,” Mark Hancock, the union’s national president, said at a news conference. “We’re going to make sure that those women and men get the pay that they deserve.”
The union and its members now face the possibility of substantial fines and jail time.
The union contends that the government’s decision on Saturday to end the strike by taking the labor dispute to binding arbitration was itself illegal and violated its members’ constitutional right to strike. The union filed an application asking the Federal Court of Canada to overturn the order.
On Monday, the union planned to submit a request for an injunction to suspend the return to work and arbitration orders until the court reviews its application.
Air Canada, in a statement, estimated that the strike, which began early Saturday morning, had resulted in the cancellation of flights for 500,000 passengers.
“Air Canada regrets this impact on its customers and is fully committed to returning to service as soon as possible,” the airline said.
The independent Canada Industrial Relations Board had given the union until noon Monday to call off the strike.
Mr. Hancock said the prospect of imprisonment would not sway him.
“If it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it,” he told reporters. “If it means our union being fined, then so be it.”
Air Canada had hoped to resume some flights Sunday night and later changed the restart to Monday evening, before pushing it to Tuesday.
Patty Hajdu, the country’s labor minister, told The Canadian Press news agency and CBC News on Monday that she had ordered an investigation into one of the key issues that have stalled a settlement between the airline and the flight attendants, 70 percent of whom are women. That issue is compensation for work before and after a flight, like helping passengers board and deplane. Right now, attendants are only paid for work they do during flights.
The union wants an end that practice, which is widespread in the industry.
The union estimates that its members do about 35 hours of free work each month. It has said that Air Canada is now offering to pay for that work at half the normal wage rate. The union wants full compensation.
“We have to understand the extent of this unpaid work, when it’s happening, how employers are getting around their legal obligations,” Ms. Hajdu told CBC News.
The union declined to comment until it learns more about the minister’s investigation.
Air Canada controls about 48 percent of available seat miles in Canada, the industry measure of capacity, and, unlike its smaller competitors, offers international service to 65 countries.
While the airline said that it would try to rebook passengers on other airlines, the peak summer travel period and the lower capacity of its competitors have made that difficult. Many passengers have been rebooked on Air Canada flights days after their original departure dates in the apparent hope that the airline will be running again.
Stranded passengers have complained about their inability to get through to Air Canada’s overwhelmed call centers,. But it appeared that most travelers have taken the airline’s advice and are not going to airports to try to sort out their flights.
In addition to pay for work before and after flights, the union is seeking higher wages, particularly for its least senior members. The union contends that its least experienced members, the largest group of flight attendants, make less than minimum wage.
Air Canada has responded publicly by citing the potential earnings of its most senior flight attendants, saying that if its current offer is accepted 20 percent of that group will earn more than 90,000 Canadian dollars, about $65,000, a year.
Air Canada first tried to thwart a strike by asking the union to voluntarily agree to arbitration. Then it unsuccessfully asked the government to impose arbitration in advance of Saturday’s strike.
The increasing use of arbitration to end strikes is “a perversion to the intentions of the system,” said Stephanie Ross, an associate professor of labor studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Because arbitrators rarely introduce new measures in their imposed contracts, like ground pay for the flight attendants, she said that the prospect of arbitration removes the incentive for employers to negotiate.
“It was only a matter of time before a union defied a back-to-work order, it was a ticking time bomb,” she said adding that union’s decision has raised the stakes.
“We do have a history in Canada of union leaders who refuse to order their members back to work having been sent to jail,” she said.
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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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