Air Canada flight attendants reject wage agreement

Air Canada flight attendants overwhelmingly rejected a wage agreement on Saturday, with a bitter wage dispute now expected to be worked out through mediation as workers cannot take further legal strike action.

Flight attendants at Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge voted 99.1% against ratifying the company’s wage offer, the union said.

Negotiators struck a tentative deal on August 19 to end a four-day strike that stranded half a million passengers, after flight attendants defied Canadian government efforts to end the strike and the country’s largest carrier was forced back to the bargaining table.

Air Canada and the Canadian Union of Public Employees agreed that no labor disruption could be initiated and therefore there will be no strike or lockout, so flights will continue to operate, the airline said.

The wage portion of the deal will be referred to mediation and, if no agreement is reached at that stage, to arbitration, the airline said.

The strike cast a spotlight on demands by North American flight attendants to be paid for hours from the time they check in to when they clock out. Flight attendants at Air Canada and at multiple U.S. carriers such as United Airlines have been challenging a compensation structure that mostly pays cabin crew when an aircraft is in motion.

Air Canada said the agreement had included compensation for work performed on the ground and broad improvements to wages, pensions and benefits.

Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, told Reuters that public support for the Air Canada strike also helps her U.S. members. The AFA represents United’s flight attendants, who recently rejected a tentative agreement partly over demands for ground pay.

“The inspirational fight of the Air Canada flight attendants is helpful and creates momentum,” Nelson said.

While the flight attendants managed to secure some critical gains in Air Canada’s proposed contract, several told Reuters that the overall deal fell short on the issue of unpaid labor.

The proposed four-year deal would have added up to roughly a 20% wage hike for entry-level attendants and 16% for more experienced cabin crew.

Crew would also have received 60 minutes of pre-flight pay on narrow-body planes and 70 minutes on wide-body jets, with pay starting at 50% of flight attendants’ hourly rate in year one, rising to 70% by year four.

Flight attendants told Reuters that the raises did not cover their increased cost of living, particularly in high-cost cities such as Toronto, with many doing two or three jobs to get by.

The deal was struck between Air Canada and the union with a mediator at a Toronto airport hotel, under the threat of criminal charges, the union’s president Mark Hancock said.

“My understanding was the next day, if there was no deal, they would have gone to the courts and sought criminal contempt, then charges and fines,” Hancock told Reuters. “It would have risen to the next level.”