Flight attendants at Air Canada Go on Strike

 

Early on Saturday, 10,000 flight attendants at Air Canada went on strike, closing down the country's largest airline and perhaps leaving 130,000 passengers stranded daily.

Air Canada's flight attendants are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, whose spokesperson, Hugh Pouliot, confirmed the walkout.

Seventy percent of the attendants are female, and they want to be compensated for the unpaid job they conduct before airplanes take off and after they land—a process known as groundwork in the industry.

Prior to the walkout, Air Canada announced that it had already started to cancel flights in order to wind down operations and that it will ground all 700 of its daily flights beginning on Saturday. By Friday evening, it claimed it had already canceled 623.

In a nation where flying is frequently the only practical means of transportation due to distance, even a brief strike is predicted to cause travel pandemonium. Additionally, Air Canada offers flights to 65 other nations, which might leave passengers stuck abroad.

The airline had promised to try to get them rebooked on other airlines. However, that was already challenging due to the summer travel season and a capacity shortage on its smaller domestic competitors.

The company's desire to enter arbitration in order to prevent a walkout was denied by the workers' union on Friday. Rarely do arbitrators add significant additional clauses to the contracts they enforce, such as foundational compensation.

On Friday, Mr. Pouliot declared, "We will not give up our constitutionally guaranteed right to strike."

Additionally, Air Canada has requested that the government compel the union to participate in arbitration. However, government-mandated arbitration is typically employed to put an end to protracted and disruptive walkouts rather than to stop a strike before it starts. The government's stance on arbitration has not been made clear.

Canada's labor minister, Patty Hajdu, has been urging the two parties to resume direct talks for the previous few days.

The union sent out a notification that it planned to go on strike early on Saturday before Air Canada started canceled flights on Thursday. In a similar notification, the airline stated that it intended to lock out the flight attendants at roughly the same time.

According to the business, the strike won't impact roughly 300 distinct regional flights that are typically provided on tiny propeller aircraft operated by two minor carriers under contract with Air Canada.

On Friday afternoon, apologetic Air Canada employees were answering inquiries from dozens of detained passengers at Toronto Pearson International Airport while distributing drinks, candy bars, and granola bars devoid of nuts.

Many of the travelers who came to Pearson for in-person assistance had made travel arrangements through agents and were unable to access their online bookings.