Above photo: The tail fin of an Air Canada plane featuring their logo. Air Canada.
Represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, flight attendants began a strike on August. 16.
The same day the employer initiated a lock-out.
Flight attendants with Air Canada are voting on whether to accept a new tentative agreement from their employer. After a high-profile strike, this tentative agreement marks a victory in the face of government intervention in labour negotiations.
Represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, flight attendants began a strike on August 16, the same day the employer initiated a lock-out. Negotiations had been ongoing since December 2024, with the parties being sent to conciliation and still not reaching a deal.
CUPE made headlines when its membership decided to defy a back-to-work order issued by the Canada Industrial Relations Board. The order was delivered after Minister of Jobs and Families Patty Hadju invoked section 107 of the Canada Labour code which allows the Minister of Labour to take actions they believe would be likely to “secure industrial peace.”
The Canadian Labour Congress said this is the eighth time section 107 has been used to order workers back onto the job during a strike since June 2024, according to a report by the Canadian Press. The section has also been used to stop strikes by port workers, rail workers and, most recently, Canada Post employees.
The federal government chose to impose section 107 just hours after the strike began. By comparison, section 107 was invoked two days after the start of an August 2024 strike by rail workers represented by Teamsters Canada. Later in the year, Canada Post employees were not ordered back to work until a month after their strike began.
While other unions had decided to comply with the CIRB orders, CUPE members chose to risk fines and even jail time.
In a dramatic moment on August 16, CUPE national president Mark Hancock addressed a crowd with the CIRB back-to-work order in hand. As the crowd cheered, Hancock ripped the order pages and threw it to the ground.
“I stated pretty clearly when this strike would end,” Hancock said to the crowd. “This strike will end when we get a collective agreement that works for our members.”
The Canadian Labour Congress commended CUPE’s defiance of orders made under section 107. They said CUPE has exposed the overuse of section 107 as an unconstitutional violation of workers’ Charter-protected right to free and fair collective bargaining.
“Deals are made where they should be—at the bargaining table,” the CLC website reads. “That’s good for workers, good for communities, and good for building lasting relationships between unions and employers. The entire labour movement is grateful to flight attendants for their strength and perseverance in standing firm for these rights.”
At the core of the workers’ frustrations were unpaid work hours and low wages, CUPE said. Under the previous collective agreement, when planes were on the ground, flight attendants were working without pay. Due to a “block time” model, only the hours from takeoff to landing were counted when workers were compensated. Flight attendants perform labour while on the ground, doing required safety checks and facilitating boarding and deplaning.
CUPE members fought hard to secure better pay and an end to unpaid work despite orders that pushed them towards entering into binding arbitration.
“Unpaid work is over,” the union wrote on their website. “We have reclaimed our voice and our power. When our rights were taken away, we stood strong, we fought back—and we secured a tentative agreement that our members can vote on.”
