Air Canada told the Star Thursday that it is offering to make its flight attendants “the best paid in Canada” and has sent an official offer to the union, but the union says it has yet to receive it.
On Tuesday, Air Canada flight attendants overwhelmingly voted in favour of a strike mandate that could see them walk off the job as early as Aug. 16.
Air Canada said Thursday it sent the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) an offer that would address flight attendants’ concerns around ground pay, updating an existing policy that only sees flight attendants paid for work once the plane is in motion.
Air Canada wouldn’t comment on discussions with CUPE. “We can confirm however, that we’ve made a proposal to the union that would make our flight attendants the best paid in Canada,” the company said in an emailed statement.
The company is also offering employees an overall pay increase of more than 30 per cent over four years, according to Bloomberg. (Air Canada would not confirm or deny the 30 per cent offer when asked by the Star.)
Around midday on Thursday, CUPE senior communications officer Nathalie Garceau said she wasn’t aware of the offer.
“The company has never presented this offer to the union,” Garceau said in an email to the Star. “If this is indeed what the company plans to present when we resume negotiations on Friday, we look forward to discussing it then.”
“In the meantime we would encourage the company to focus on negotiating at the bargaining table, not through the media,” Garceau added.
Experts told the Star it’s difficult to predict whether a strike by Air Canada flight attendants would have an impact on scheduled flights or cause passengers delays or disruptions. They added that if a work stoppage does happen, the government could decide to issue a return-to-work order.
“This is an aggressive round of bargaining ” said Steven Tufts, an associate professor of labour at York University. “The previous agreement was 10 years long, and (flight attendants) want to make up ground,” Tufts said, adding, this comes after “Air Canada pilots had a fairly significant agreement made last year.”
In 2024, Air Canada offered its pilots a 42 per cent pay raise over four years in a tentative agreement to avoid a potential strike or lockout.
Another key factor in this case, according to Tufts, is that “we weren’t in an election cycle last year,” adding that during elections, governments are less likely to legislate workers back to work “because they’re all competing for the union vote.”
York University Professor David Doorey, specializing in work law, said negotiations usually continue right up to a strike or lockout deadline “and even afterwards if the parties are close.”
Doorey said the federal government has “shown a propensity to intervene in airline labour disputes to prevent work stoppages,” adding “this expectation of government intervention might discourage one or both parties from making serious offers at this point.”
According to Tufts, “Carney may be more willing to use back-to-work legislation than Trudeau was,” simply because he’s not in an election. “The big question is, even if flight attendants do strike, will the government act and, how quickly?”
