UPDATED: No More Labour Disruption Despite Air Canada Flight Attendants Massively Rejecting Deal

After a week of voting, the Air Canada Component of CUPE said 99.1 % of members rejected the tentative agreement reached August 19 after a three-day strike. The good news for Canadian travellers is that the two parties have agreed there will be no further labour disruption.

“The wage issue is now in mediation and, if necessary, will be resolved in arbitration,” the CUPE statement read.

In its own statement, Air Canada confirmed that the issue is now in mediation, but flights will operate as usual.

“Air Canada and CUPE contemplated this potential outcome and mutually agreed that if the tentative agreement was not ratified, the wage portion would be referred to mediation and, if no agreement was reached at that stage, to arbitration,” the Air Canada statement reads. 

“The parties also agreed that no labour disruption could be initiated, and therefore there will be no strike or lock-out, and flights will continue to operate.”

CUPE remains unhappy about the process, accusing the federal government of interfering to the detriment of flight attendants.

“The federal government’s intervention in the negotiations had a corrosive effect that was impossible to ignore,’ the union said.

“Rather than remaining neutral, it distorted the balance of the process by offering Air Canada the leverage to limit the wage increases offered to flight attendants.”

The proposed four-year deal would have added up to about a 20% wage hike for entry-level attendants and 16% for more experienced cabin crew.

In an element considered precedent-setting for the North American aviation industry, cabin crew would also have received 60 minutes of pre-flight pay on narrow-body planes and 70 minutes on wide-body jets, with pay starting at 50% of flight attendants’ hourly rate in year one, rising to 70% by year four.

The three-day strike threw the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of Canadians into chaos during the peak summer travel season.