A whopping 99.1 per cent of Air Canada flight attendants voted down the airline’s wage offer on Sept. 6.
The offer would have bumped wages 12 per cent for junior flight attendants, and eight per cent for senior ones, plus smaller increases in following years. But attendants say even then many of them would earn less than the federal minimum wage for their work.
Everything else the union and employer previously agreed to during bargaining will end up in the new agreement.
The airline and the union representing the workers, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), have agreed that there will be no strike or lockout, despite the members rejecting the wage deal.
The issue is now in binding arbitration, meaning a third party will decide the wages in the new collective agreement.
From Aug. 16 to 19, a three-day strike grounded all Air Canada flights. Federal Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu ordered the flight attendants back to work less than 12 hours later by using Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code.
The Liberal government used Section 107 in 2024 to force striking workers back on the job at Canada Post, and at ports in Montreal and Vancouver.
Since 1945, there has been a process in Canada, called the Rand formula, to define when strikes can happen. This is a compromise between workers and employers to maintain labour stability. When the government meddles with the basis of the process to favour corporate investors, workers may question the legitimacy of the whole system.
When the government ordered Air Canada workers to end their legal strike, they refused. “If it means folks like me going to jail, so be it,” said CUPE national president Mark Hancock. After that, it took just seven hours for Air Canada to work out a deal with the union.
But some flight attendants aren’t happy that CUPE has now shut down their option of going back on strike to win a better deal.
“The offer that Air Canada has put on the table is not good enough. The wages are insulting, and the recognition of our unpaid hours is only partial and stretched over years,” wrote Owen Gallant, an Air Canada flight attendant living in Toronto, in a Facebook post. He was writing on Aug. 24, before the workers voted on the wage deal.
“If we vote it down, we are forced into binding arbitration — giving up our say entirely and leaving our future in the hands of an outsider,” he continued. “That’s not a choice, that’s a corner.”