Air Canada, flight attendants resume talks as days-old strike continues

Toronto — Air Canada and the union representing 10,000 flight attendants resumed talks late Monday for the primary time since a strike by the flight attendants started over the weekend. The walkout affecting about 130,000 vacationers a day on the peak of the summer season journey season.

It was the primary time the 2 sides talked since early Saturday or late Friday. In an replace to its members, the union stated the airline reached out and the assembly occurred with the help of a mediator in Toronto.

It adopted the union’s declaration that the flight attendants will not return to work regardless that the strike, now in its third day, has been declared unlawful.

Earlier, Air Canada stated rolling cancellations would now prolong to Tuesday afternoon after the union defied a second return-to-work order. The nation’s greatest airline had stated earlier that operations would resume Monday night however the union president stated that will not occur.

“We is not going to be returning to the skies,” stated Mark Hancock, nationwide president for Canadian Union of Public Workers, or CUPE, which additionally represents some personal sectors.

The Canada Industrial Relations Board had declared the strike unlawful Monday and ordered the flight attendants again on the job. However the union stated it might defy the directive. Union leaders additionally ignored a weekend order to undergo binding arbitration and finish the strike by Sunday afternoon.

The board, an impartial administrative tribunal that interprets and applies Canada’s labor legal guidelines, had stated the union wanted to offer written discover to all of its members by midday Monday that they need to resume their duties.

Requested on Monday what repercussions the union was prepared to face for its defiance of the labor board’s return to works orders, Hancock stated, “There is not any restrict. We will keep sturdy.”  

“If it means people like me going to jail, then so be it. If it means our union being fined, then so be it,” Hancock stated. “We’re searching for an answer right here. Our members desire a resolution right here, however resolution needs to be discovered on the bargaining desk.”

It wasn’t instantly clear what recourse the board or the federal government have if the union continues to refuse.

Labor leaders are objecting to the Canadian authorities’s repeated use of a legislation that cuts off employees’ proper to strike and forces them into arbitration, a step the federal government took lately with employees at ports, railways and elsewhere.

“We’re in a state of affairs the place actually a whole bunch of hundreds of Canadians and guests to our nation are being disrupted by this motion,” Prime Minister Mark Carney stated. “I urge each events to resolve this as shortly as doable.”

Carney careworn it was vital that flight attendants have been compensated pretty always.

Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu stated the federal authorities is launching a probe into the unions’ allegations that flight attendants are usually not paid for work they do whereas airplanes are on the bottom, and is contemplating introducing laws to deal with the problem.

Air Canada operates round 700 flights per day. The airline estimated Monday that 500,000 prospects could be affected by flight cancellations.

Aviation analytics agency Cirium stated that as of Monday afternoon, Air Canada had referred to as off a minimum of 1,219 home flights and 1,339 worldwide flights since final Thursday, when the service started steadily suspending its operations forward of the strike and lockout.

Air Canada chief govt Michael Rousseau stated he nonetheless was searching for a fast decision.

“We’re clearly hoping we are able to go tomorrow, however we’ll make that call later as we speak,” Rousseau stated on BNN Bloomberg shortly after the union introduced it might proceed with the strike.

Montreal resident Robert Brzymowski has been stranded in Prague alongside along with his spouse and their two youngsters since Saturday, when Air Canada canceled their flight house from what was meant to be a two-week trip visiting relations.

Brzymowski, who consults companies on energy-efficient practices, stated he was set to start out a brand new job Monday however misplaced out on the contract as a result of he wasn’t again in Montreal in time.

“I wasn’t planning on shedding my job over trip,” he stated.

Pissed off by what he described as a scarcity of communication from the airline, Brzymowski stated he went to the airport in Prague on Monday morning and was capable of get the airline to e book them a brand new flight on Aug. 25 – greater than per week after their authentic flight.

He stated his youngsters may also miss the primary day of the brand new faculty yr, and his spouse will not receives a commission for the week as a result of she used the final of her paid break day for the yr for this journey.

“I, for one, won’t ever fly Air Canada once more,” Brzymowski stated. “I am going to take a ship if I’ve to.”

Flight attendants walked off the job early Saturday after turning down the airline’s request to enter into government-directed arbitration, which permits a third-party mediator to resolve the phrases of a brand new contract.

Air Canada and CUPE have been in contract talks for about eight months however stay far aside on the problem of pay and the unpaid work that flight attendants do when planes aren’t within the air.

The airline’s newest provide included a 38% improve in whole compensation, together with advantages and pensions, over 4 years that it stated “would have made our flight attendants the most effective compensated in Canada.”

However the union pushed again, saying the proposed 8% elevate within the first yr did not go far sufficient due to inflation.

Passengers whose flights are impacted might be eligible to request a full refund on the airline’s web site or cellular app, in accordance with Air Canada.