Why the Canadian Flight Attendants’ Strike Was “A Perfect Storm” for Labor

Patty Hajdu, the Minister of Jobs and Families, ordered flight attendants back to work using Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, which grants the minister ​“additional powers” to be exercised in the pursuit of ​“industrial peace.” In full, it reads:

Essentially, the section allows the minister to do what they feel is necessary to end or resolve labor disputes, including directing the Canada Industrial Relations Board to take action. In this case, Minister Hajdu directed the board to order flight attendants back to work and the union to submit to binding arbitration.

Unlike typical back-to-work legislation, orders issued under Section 107 don’t require parliamentary approval, since they rely on an existing part of the Canada Labour Code, which governs workers in federally-regulated industries.

This allows the ruling party to avoid bringing the issue up for parliamentary debate. Forcing workers back to their jobs during strikes can easily become a political football, which could be politically disastrous for a minority government, like those led by Mark Carney and previously Justin Trudeau.

“Using Section 107 is sort of a bureaucratic solution, a technical solution, rather than the one that would become much, much more politicized by bringing it into Parliament,” explained Stephanie Ross, a professor of labor studies at McMaster University.

Traditional back-to-work legislation has also become more difficult to pass since a landmark 2015 decision by the Supreme Court that affirmed Canadians’ right to strike. Ross told PressProgress that back-to-work legislation that intervenes in a strike within 12 hours of it starting would likely not stand up to constitutional challenge.

“It’s not that back-to-work legislation is always unconstitutional, but you have to allow for — especially in the private sector — for the economic disruption to reach a significant enough level before almost preemptively intervening,” said Ross.

The government used Section 107 three times between August and December of last year, sending railway, longshore and Canada Post workers back to their jobs during strikes and lockouts.

Braley-Rattai said this ​“eyebrow-raising” pattern undermines the government’s promises that it respects the right to strike.

“Workers in this country keep being told that the government respects their right to strike but then seemingly curtails it most of the time,” said Braley-Rattai.

Ross agreed the government’s use of Section 107 reveals which side of the bargaining table they see as a priority. She pointed out that the government has been willing to use Section 107 to force binding arbitration when companies like Air Canada request it, but not when unions do so.

Earlier this year, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers requested binding arbitration in their ongoing dispute with Canada Post. Minister Hajdu instead forced the postal workers to vote on Canada Post’s ​“best and final” offer, a move that Canada Post had asked for.

“It tells us something very disappointing about the attitude in the federal government: employers and their interests, and the way that they understand their interests, are going to be at the centre of their decision-making, even though, of course, they frame it as trying to protect the public from disruptions of economically essential services and industries,” said Ross.

In an interview with BNN Bloomberg on Monday, Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau said the company didn’t make provisions to ensure passengers wouldn’t be stranded in the event of a strike because the company had expected the federal government to use Section 107 to avoid job action.

“Well, we thought, obviously, that Section 107 would be enforced, and that (the union) wouldn’t illegally avoid Section 107,” said Rousseau.

The government’s use of Section 107 as an alternative to traditional back-to-work legislation is being challenged in a number of ongoing court cases.

In a filing with the Federal Court on Monday, CUPE’s Air Canada Component argued that in using Section 107 to end the flight attendants’ strike, the minister ​“disregarded, undermined and effectively nullified the constitutional right to strike held by the Union and its members under s.2(d) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and under international law.”

On the picket line at Vancouver International Airport on Monday, Air Canada flight attendant Reagan Goulding told PressProgress that, given the government’s track record of sending striking workers back to their jobs, she and her colleagues weren’t surprised when Air Canada requested the government use Section 107.

“They didn’t even entertain the idea of negotiations, they wanted to go straight to legislate, and that’s what we don’t agree with,” said Goulding.

In voting 99.7% in favor of strike action and defying the federal government’s order to return to work, Ross said CUPE’s Air Canada Component showed ​“a kind of resolve that is something that we’ve not seen for a long time.”

“​​This is a group of workers who have been waiting for 10-plus years to be able to have their opportunity to bargain,” said Ross.

In 2012, the federal government under Stephen Harper pre-emptively banned strikes at Air Canada. That ban, combined with a desire for stability, led both the pilots and flight attendants to sign 10-year collective agreements, a contract length Braley-Rattai described as ​“highly unusual.”

Ross said that though long contracts can seem like a good idea for the stability they can provide, research shows it can hurt a union’s ability to mobilize its membership for votes and job actions, which can in turn hurt them in the next round of negotiations.

Long-term collective agreements also put additional pressure on collective bargaining, as major changes to agreements are often needed, especially when there have been significant shifts in the economy.

Given the last decade has seen both a global pandemic and record inflation, Ross said flight attendants understandably expected to make up lost ground during this round of negotiations.

“You can imagine there’s a lot of pent-up anger, discontent, frustration that is now all piled on to this one round of bargaining,” said Ross.

Goulding has worked as a flight attendant for nearly 30 years. She said that at the same time inflation has made life more expensive, the amount of work flight attendants do before and after flights — all of which is currently unpaid — has increased ​“tenfold.”

“The amount of service we do has definitely increased,” said Goulding. ​“The amount of work on the ground, boarding times, de-planing times, assisting passengers.”

She said some of her younger colleagues struggle to survive in Vancouver on an entry-level flight attendant’s salary. According to CUPE, entry-level flight attendants make just $27,000/year before taxes — less than the federal minimum wage.

“They can’t afford to live,” said Goulding. ​“So they’re living with 10 people to a room. One of the other flight attendants I was talking with the other day, she was living in a trailer parked in a parking lot.”

Unpaid work has long been standard for flight attendants, but Goulding said that is starting to change.

“Even us, as flight attendants, thought it was okay at one time, and we were so conditioned to thinking this is acceptable,” said Goulding. ​“It’s not. We’re breaking that cycle, and it stops now.”

As workers at Canada’s biggest airline, Ross said flight attendants at Air Canada are in a position to set a new standard for the industry.

“This is an opportunity that they have to really redress a longstanding injustice in their sector and to potentially make a groundbreaking change to how flight attendants are compensated, not just at Air Canada, but potentially in Canada or across North America,” said Ross.

Goulding said the flight attendants had been closely watching the bargaining between pilots, represented by the Air Line Pilots Association, and Air Canada last year.

Pilots voted 98% in favor of striking before agreeing to a collective agreement that saw a 42% increase in wages over four years.

“We were waiting to see what was going to happen, and we were extremely happy that they got a contract that most of them want,” said Goulding. She said flight attendants thought that would bode well for their own round of bargaining, which turned out not to be the case.

Ross said the fact that Air Canada was willing to negotiate in good faith with its pilots, a predominantly male workforce, while requesting the government step in to send flight attendants, a predominantly female workforce, back to their jobs to avoid a strike, reveals how each group’s labor is valued by the company.

“It tells you something about the perspective of the employer, in terms of the relative value of male-dominated versus female-dominated work, and the way that their business model is heavily dependent upon the gendered discount that they can enjoy by not paying flight attendants for some portion of their required work duties,” said Ross.

Ross said that while the demographics of the flight-attendant workforce can be a source of discrimination, that injustice can also help mobilize workers to rally together.

“It’s a basis on which people develop a sense of shared injustice around how they are treated, that gives them a sense of the need to fight,” said Ross.

Unlike the other workers who have been forced back to their jobs amidst strikes and lockouts — railway, longshore and postal-service workers — flight attendants are highly visible to the public.

“The connection that these workers have to the public gives them a base of support (and) a sense of the importance of their work,” said Ross.

New polling data suggests Canadians paid close attention to the flight attendants’ strike, with the majority of respondents supporting the workers rather than the company.