Air Canada‘s 10,000 striking flight attendants were supposed to cut their strike short. A labor relations board declared their walkout illegal on Monday and ordered everyone back to work later that day. It was a move sought by the Canadian government since the strike was disrupting air travel, the New York Times reported, and the Liberals would rather kneecap regular people than pressure a notoriously terrible airline to give its workers a fair deal. The union, however, told the labor board to go kick rocks and still managed to reach a deal with Air Canada, CNN reports.
The union hadn’t been striking for long. By the time it was over, the flight attendants had been on strike for a mere four days, but on Saturday, Mark Carney’s government tried to put a stop to workers standing up for fair treatment by forcing them into binding arbitration. But while the labor board quickly concluded the strike was illegal, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents the flight attendants, asserted the government’s actions were illegal right out of the gate and had violated its members’ rights. The union then asked the Federal Court of Canada to overturn the return-to-work order and continued to strike.
“We don’t want Canadians caught in this, but we will not be returning to the skies,” Mark Hancock, the union’s president, told reporters. “We’re going to make sure that those women and men get the pay that they deserve.” And ultimately, he got his deal.
No more free labor
Continuing to strike certainly didn’t come without risks. The union and its members were potentially facing large fines for every day they remained on strike, and the union’s leadership could have gotten jail time. Still, that didn’t deter the flight attendants or union leadership. “If it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it,” Hancock told the press. “If it means our union being fined, then so be it.”
One of the biggest sticking points during negotiations, of course, came down to money. The flight attendants wanted to be paid for the entire time they were at work, while Air Canada disagreed. More specifically, the union wanted Air Canada to end its practice of only paying flight attendants for the work they do on the flights themselves and expecting them to work for free before and after each flight. Air Canada isn’t the only airline that expects its flight attendants to work for free, but that doesn’t make it any less unfair. They also demanded higher wages in general, claiming their least senior workers ultimately make less than minimum wage, and raises hadn’t kept up with the cost of living.
Members still have to approve the agreement before it becomes official, but after the tentative agreement was reached, the union released a statement saying, “Flight attendants at Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge have reached a tentative agreement, achieving transformational change for our industry after a historic fight to affirm our Charter rights. Unpaid work is over. We have reclaimed our voice and our power.”
Of course, Air Canada could have negotiated in good faith and agreed to a fair contract, but instead, it chose to hold out and cancel thousands of flights and ruin several hundred thousand people’s travel plans before ultimately backing down. But it did back down, marking a major win for the flight attendants and workers in general. We all deserve to be paid a fair, livable wage, and if a bunch of wealthy executives don’t like that, we don’t have to take it. We can and should fight back.
