UPDATE: Air Canada flight attendants have voted overwhelmingly to reject the airline’s latest contract offer, with 99 per cent voting it down.

September 5: When Air Canada flight attendants walked off the job last month demanding fair pay for their work hours, some were quick to declare the end of unpaid work in Canada. But as details emerged about the tentative agreement offered by Air Canada, it became clear that what the company is offering is drastically less than the workers’ initial demands. 

As the September 6 vote approaches, many flight attendants are now stating publicly to journalists and on social media that they may not ratify the deal. 

The flight attendants had one rallying cry: “Unpaid work won’t fly” — a reference to the long-standing practice across the commercial airline industry of not paying cabin crew for work they do when they are on the ground, before the plane is in motion.

The strike caused chaos during the peak summer travel season. At the behest of Air Canada, the government’s response was swift. Within 24 hours, prime minister Mark Carney instructed the Federal Industrial Relations Board to force the more than 10,500 striking workers — 70 per cent of whom identify as women — back to work. The union refused, risking fines and even jail time.

The move by the government shocked labour activists and unions across the country, and sent a message about the government’s lack of belief in the collective power of women. 

Judy Rebick, longtime feminist and human rights activist, says the government’s actions show how thoroughly corporate interests have captured state power and how little women’s labour is valued.

“They didn’t believe that these women would stand up to them,” said Rebick. Choosing corporate profits over the rights of workers is “the nature of capitalism,” she says, and has intensified under decades of neoliberalism. 

Women’s labour under neoliberalism

Air Canada’s flight attendants are part of a long tradition of women’s work being systematically undervalued in Canada, Rebick said.

Despite laws prohibiting gender-based discrimination, women in Canada continue to disproportionately earn less than men and take on most unpaid labour. CUPE says that Air Canada wants to “reinforce the gender pay gap” by offering pilots, most of whom are men, a 26 per cent wage increase — more than three times what it offered flight attendants.

Typically, sectors that normalize the expectation of unpaid work are employed predominantly by women. These roles, often referred to as “pink collar,” include jobs like flight attendants, nursing, childcare, and service work that involves emotional labour. 

This work is consistently undervalued because it is often perceived as “not providing economic value” to society. Immigrant and racialized women especially carry much of the burden of unpaid or “invisible” labour.

The Air Canada flight attendants are just the latest example of workplace gender inequality in action. As Globe and Mail reporter and former Air Canada flight attendant Ann Hui wrote, airline staff are not only underpaid but often subjected to harassment, sexism, and unpaid hours.

Air Canada’s wealth inequality

Some flight attendants have expressed their frustrations with the deal that’s on the table, and say it still fails to provide a living wage to entry-level workers. The deal does also not fully address concerns about lack of wages for hours worked while the plane is not in the air.

Flight attendants are upset about the contents of the deal, but also the way it was forcibly imposed by the government.

Many others have pointed out the “absurd” inequality between Air Canada executives, who take home millions in salary and bonuses while the company profits in the billions annually.

Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau makes upwards of $12 million a year in bonuses and salary—a 255 per cent increase from his compensation in 2021. That’s $33,000 per day for an entire year. Other company executives’ total compensation ranges from $1.4 million to $3.1 million per year.

When asked by BNN Bloomberg about why Air Canada doesn’t pay for all hours worked, Rousseau admitted that paying flight attendants poverty wages is part of how the industry remains so profitable. “It’s the business model that the vast majority of airlines follow around the world.”

Meanwhile, many flight attendants report working multiple jobs and relying on food banks just to make ends meet. An investigation by The Breach in 2023 revealed that airline workers at WestJet also struggled with unlivable wages, indicating systemic exploitation across the industry.

Henly Larden, CUPE Local 4094 interim president and Air Canada flight attendant, told Ricochet that the company needs to acknowledge the tireless work that airline workers do every day, sometimes unpaid.

“We understand that Air Canada requires success in order to continue on as Canada’s airline and legacy carrier,” said Larden. “We are the face of Air Canada, and… we are what keeps this organization operating.”

After months of refusal to meet the demands of its workers and continuous grievances from the union, on August 5, the union voted 99.7 per cent in favour of strike action — a nearly unanimous rejection of their working conditions. According to the union, the airline refused to negotiate on ground pay and wages. Instead it pushed for voluntary arbitration, intended to strip workers of their right to collectively bargain for an agreement.

What triggered the government’s intervention was Air Canada’s appeal for it to invoke Section 107 of the labour code, legislation designed to pre-empt job action by forcing workers into arbitration.

Larry Savage, professor in the Labour Studies department at Brock University, explains how this intervention fits a broader pattern. 

“In general, employers in federally-regulated sectors have come to strategically rely on government intervention and the Liberals have proven a reliable dance partner,” he told Ricochet.

As Jen Hassum, executive director of the Broadbent Institute, wrote in Ricochet: “By invoking a little-known Section 107 loophole, the government acted unilaterally, setting a stark precedent: corporations need not negotiate, for the state will act as their enforcer.”

Although the government’s use of Section 107 was a shock to many Canadians, its pro-corporate bias was no surprise to Rebick.

“This government is a neoliberal government, and their intention is to support neoliberal capitalism,” she said. “The whole journey of neoliberalism has been to roll back workers’ rights and for the government to act more and more in the interests of corporations.”

Multi-union solidarity and the power of workers

Despite calling the reports of unpaid work “deeply concerning” and promising a probe into the airline industry, the government chose to order striking workers back to jobs where flight attendants are expected to work for free.

In defiance of the government’s heavy-handed intervention, solidarity grew quickly from other unions. Within days of the flight attendants defying the back-to-work order, unions across Canada issued statements of support, including Public Service Alliance of Canada, Unifor, and IAM, representing thousands of airline and transportation workers across Canada and beyond.

“I myself, alongside many others at the rally and picket lines were moved to tears and with immeasurable gratitude for the fortitude of so many groups standing at our sides, union and non union alike,” Larden said.

Section 107 is being challenged, but as Savage warns, governments can always revert to passing traditional back-to-work legislation.

“I think the important lesson to draw from the CUPE strike at Air Canada is that rights flow from power, not the other way around. The right to strike only became meaningful once workers collectively decided to stand in their power and refuse to comply with the Minister’s back to work order,” Savage said.

CUPE members are voting on a tentative agreement until September 6. Many flight attendants have posted in CUPE’s Air Canada Facebook group that they are unsatisfied with the agreement and are ready and willing to keep fighting for better working conditions, rather than accept a poor deal. 

The tentative agreement offers just a 12 per cent wage increase for some and an 8 per cent wage for others. With regard to the unpaid hours or “ground pay” — Air Canada is only offering to pay one half of the flight attendants’ hourly rate, with the rate increasing 20 per cent over the next few years.

While it may not be what the flight attendants asked for, many still see the deal as a victory for labour rights and the labour movement, especially at a time when workers’ rights are under attack from nearly every direction. 

However, despite the inspiring solidarity between unions, conditions are not yet right for a large-scale general strike, Savage says.

“In order to achieve the conditions necessary to launch a successful general strike, you’d need a demand that strongly united the labour movement, a deep commitment to inter-union solidarity that extended beyond a single employer or sector, and sky-high levels of worker militancy.”