The Canadian government has forced flight attendants at Air Canada back to work less than 12 hours after they began striking and ordered binding arbitration over a dispute that has left more than 100,000 travellers stranded around the world during the peak summer travel season.
Since March, Canada’s largest airline and the union representing its flight attendants have been locked in an increasingly bitter dispute over what the union has described as “poverty wages” and unpaid labour. Flight attendants are not paid for any work before or after the plane takes off.
On Saturday, Canada’s federal jobs minister, Patty Hajdu, said it was clear the talks had reached an impasse and that the impact was being felt by Canadians and visitors across the country.
“The talks broke down,” said Hajdu as she told reporters that she had asked the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order an immediate end to the strike and to impose binding arbitration. “It is clear that the parties are not any closer to resolving some of the key issues that remain and they will need help with the arbitrator.”
She appeared to link her actions to the toll that US tariff increases had taken on the Canadian economy. “In a year in which Canadian families and businesses have already experienced too much disruption and uncertainty, this is not the time to add additional challenges and disruptions to their lives and our economy,” she said in a statement.
Hajdu’s power to halt the strike stems from a section of the Canada Labour Code, which gives the minister unilateral authority to end work stoppages in order to “maintain or secure industrial peace”. While the section was rarely used by previous governments, the Liberal government has invoked it several times in the past year, quelling strikes by workers at Canadian ports, the post office and railway companies, prompting analysts to voice concerns that the use of the clause may be undermining workers’ rights.
The union representing the flight attendants decried the Liberal government for stepping in within hours, accusing it of violating their right to take job action. Air Canada had reportedly previously requested that the government intervene to impose binding arbitration.
Wesley Lesosky, of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said the government was giving “Air Canada exactly what they want – hours and hours of unpaid labour from underpaid flight attendants, while the company pulls in sky-high profits and extraordinary executive compensation”.
After issuing a strike notice earlier this week, flight attendants stopped work in the early hours of Saturday. Around the same time, Air Canada, which operates about 700 flights a day, said it would begin locking flight attendants out of airports.
According to the aviation analytics firm Cirium, the airline had cancelled 671 flights by Saturday afternoon, leaving some travellers stranded overseas and others scrambling to find alternatives during the busy summer travel season. About 130,000 customers a day could be affected by a disruption, according to the airline.
Air Canada said it was planning on restarting flights on Sunday evening but that some would have to be cancelled over the next seven to 10 days as the schedule stabilises and returns to normal. It had previously said it could take up to a week to resume full operations.
The airline said earlier it had offered its flight attendants “an increase of more than 38% on global compensation”, but the union said the figure failed to fully account for inflation. Air Canada also said it was willing to pay flight attendants 50% of their wage for work done before planes take off, leading the union to reply that its members should be fully compensated for their labour.
About 70% of the airline’s flight attendants are women, said Natasha Stea, a local union president and flight attendant. She questioned whether they were being treated fairly, given that Air Canada pilots, the vast majority of whom are men, received a significant raise last year.
“We are heartbroken for our passengers,” she told the Associated Press late last week. “Nobody wants to see Canadians stranded or anxious about their travel plans, but we cannot work for free.”