Defying Back to Work Order, Air Canada Flight Attendants Secure Tentative Agreement

Flight attendants with Air Canada and subsidiary Air Canada Rouge walked out early August 17. As expected, the Liberal government ordered them back to work 12 hours later, declaring their strike unlawful.

In a bold move with wide implications, the 10,000 striking flight attendants defied the order. They’d voted 99.7 percent to strike earlier this month.

Their union, an affiliate of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said the back-to-work order violated their right to strike, and CUPE president Mark Hancock ripped it up.

“Members are reminded that it is not a criminal offence to remain on the picket line,” the union wrote in a bargaining update. “While union leaders may be subject to arrest, union members are not at risk of arrest for participating in the strike. Please continue to sign up for picket duty and report as planned.”

An estimated 3,000 flights were cancelled, with 130,000 passengers affected daily, airline analysts said. Facing losses of $43 million a day, the airline abruptly restarted negotiations.

The Canadian federal government has issued back-to-work orders to halt or prevent strikes eight times since June 2024. Air Canada flight attendants were the first in that period to defy the order.

‘JAIL? SO BE IT’

“If it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it,” said Hancock at a press conference. “If it means our union being fined, then so be it.”

The workers picketed airports across Canada, chanting “Forced to fly? We won’t comply!” and carrying signs saying “Ground our rights? Ground the planes!” and “Unpaid work won’t fly.” They were joined by other Canadian unions at rallies in Montreal and elsewhere.

The U.S.-based Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) sent a solidarity message calling for an end to poverty wages at the airline. “If you are an Air Canada passenger with a delayed or canceled flight…remember where the blame lies: corporate greed,” said AFA President Sara Nelson.

Air Canada was originally publicly-owned, but was privatized in 1988. It made nearly $3 billion in profit last year, and has engaged in huge stock buybacks, including $300 million in planned buybacks this year. The CEO made $14.6 million last year.

Three days later, Air Canada workers had a tentative agreement that appears to include some ground duty pay, a huge issue in the strike and the eight months of negotiations leading up to it.

Members are voting on the proposed contract during a 10-day period starting August 27.

WORK FOR FREE?

Previous negotiations, the union said, left flight attendant pay “below inflation, below market value [and] below minimum wage,” because so much of the time flight attendants spend at work is not compensated.

Air Canada flight attendants are not paid for the time they work until the boarding door closes, and stop being paid when the door opens again. “As a Rouge flight attendant I once spent nearly 14 hours on duty without the plane ever leaving the ground,” one CUPE member wrote on Facebook. “We boarded and deplaned passengers three times due to a maintenance issue…I was only paid a little over four hours.”

This has long been typical treatment for flight attendants in the U.S., too. However, flight attendant unions have recently won ground duty pay at Alaska, SkyWest, and American Airlines. At American, 26,000 members of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants won boarding pay as well as a “sit-time rig”—pay for time when they are at work for more than 2.5 hours but aren’t flying, usually due to snarled airline schedules.

In 2022, Delta extended half-pay for boarding in an attempt to forestall efforts to unionize. Delta remains the only big U.S. airline where flight attendants have no union, though the AFA has been attempting to organize the company for years.

At United Airlines, 28,000 AFA flight attendants in July overwhelmingly voted down a contract, recommended by the union, that included half-pay during boarding as well as substantial raises. Of 92 percent voting, 71 percent rejected the contract, and the sides are back in negotiations. United, Delta, and American are the largest passenger airlines in the world.

A RIGHT TO STRIKE

The Canadian federal government is now regularly using Section 107 of the Labor Code to order striking workers back to work, claiming emergency powers to restore industrial peace. Employers like Air Canada appear to now be counting on the government to quickly end strikes—the company announced flights would resume even before the government announced the order.

“Real negotiations cannot happen if one side is banking on the government taking away the rights of the [union],” said CUPE’s Hancock at a press conference denouncing the order.

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In the last year the law has been used against rail and port workers, and it hit 55,000 postal workers in November. In those cases, the strikers returned to work. The federal orders force the parties into binding arbitration.

In earlier years, back-to-work orders usually took the form of laws passed by parliament, but the Canadian Supreme Court in 2015 declared that the right to strike is protected by the Canadian constitution. “But since the Liberals have interpreted the law’s vague language around promoting ‘industrial peace’ to confer the ability to intervene in any strike they find inconvenient, workers have faced an onslaught of repression,” wrote Adam D.K. King in The Maple.

CUPE and the Canadian Labor Congress have called for repeal of Section 107, which was enacted in 1984.

But breaking the law may have broken it permanently. The flight attendants’ refusal to go back “sets a precedent for the reality that [Section] 107 is no longer effective, it is effectively dead,” Canadian Labour Congress president Bea Bruske told The Canadian Press. “The best way to deal with it is to remove it entirely because unions, workers, the labor movement has been emboldened by this and we’re not going to turn around.”

Other Canadian workers have scorned back-to-work orders. In 2022, Ontario tried to use provincial legislation to force 55,000 striking school workers back to work, but they defied the law, and other unions threatened a general strike. The government backed down.

Members of the flight attendants union are not speaking to the press while they consider the contract, said a CUPE spokesperson. Voting results are expected September 6.

Luis Feliz Leon contributed reporting.