MONTREAL/TORONTO: Air Canada’s unionized flight attendants reached an agreement with the country’s largest carrier on Tuesday, ending the first strike by its cabin crew in 40 years that had upended travel plans for hundreds of thousands of passengers.
The strike that lasted nearly four days had led the airline that serves about 130,000 people daily to withdraw its third quarter and full-year earnings guidance.
The carrier said it would gradually resume operations and a full restoration may require a week or more, while the union said it has completed mediation with the airline and its low-cost affiliate Air Canada Rouge.
“The Strike has ended. We have a tentative agreement we will bring forward to you,” the Canadian Union of Public Employees said in a Facebook post.
Air Canada said some flights will be canceled over the next seven to ten days until the schedule is stabilized and that customers with canceled flights can choose between a refund, travel credit, or rebooking on another airline.
“Air Canada’s Q3 just taxied back to the gate with hundreds of canceled flights that could take up to 10 days to make up for,” said Michael Schulman, chief investment officer at Running Point Capital.
Even though stranded passengers expressed frustration as many were forced to sleep in airports or scramble for alternate flights, they sympathized with the workers on strike.
The carrier had earlier offered a 38 percent increase in total compensation for flight attendants over four years, with a 25 percent raise in the first year, which the union deemed insufficient.
The flight attendants walked off the job on Saturday after contract talks with the carrier failed. They had sought pay for tasks such as boarding passengers, which are not remunerated. They are now paid for time when the plane is moving.
The CUPE, which represents Air Canada’s 10,400 flight attendants, wanted to make gains on unpaid work that go beyond recent advances secured by their counterparts at US carriers like American Airlines.
In a rare act of defiance, the union remained on strike even after the Canada Industrial Relations Board declared its action unlawful.
Their refusal to follow a federal labor board order for the flight attendants to return to work had created a three-way standoff between the company, workers and the government.
Jobs Minister Patty Hajjdu had urged both sides to consider government mediation and raised pressure on Air Canada, promising to investigate allegations of unpaid work in the airline sector, a key complaint of flight attendants who say they are not paid for work on the ground.
Over the past two years, unions in aerospace, construction, airline and rail sectors have pushed employers for higher pay, improved conditions and better benefits amid a tight labor market.
Air Canada’s flight attendants have for months argued new contracts should include pay for work done on the ground, such as boarding passengers, but neither the union nor the airline disclosed whether that issue was addressed in the deal.
Its CEO had on Monday in a Reuters interview stopped short of offering plans to break the deadlock, while defending the airline’s offer of a 38 percent boost to flight attendants’ total compensation.