The Current - The Air Canada strike is over. Who won, and what comes next?

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

After three days of grounded flights, Air Canada has reached a tentative deal with its 10,000 flight attendants. The agreement includes pay for work done on the ground. Labour studies professor Alison Braley-Rattai joins us to explain why this strike could set a precedent for other workers, and what Ottawa’s quick move to end the walkout says about back-to-work laws.

Welcome to the dudes club, a brotherhood supporting men's health and wellness. Established in the Vancouver Downtown East Side in 2010, the dudes club is a community-based organization that focuses on indigenous men's health, many of whom are struggling with intergenerational trauma, addiction, poverty, homelessness, and chronic diseases. The aim is to reduce isolation and loneliness, and for the men to regain a sense of pride and purpose in their lives. As a global health care company, Novo Nordisk is dedicated to driving change for a healthy world. It's what we've been doing since 1923.

It also takes the strength and determination of the communities around us, whether it's through disease awareness, fighting stigmas and loneliness, education, or empowering people to become more active. Novo Nordisk is supporting local changemakers because it takes more than medicine to live a healthy life. Leave your armor at the door. Watch this paid content on CBC. Jim. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Air Canada planes are in the sky again. The airline reached a tentative agreement yesterday with the

union representing 10,000 flight attendants. They'd been on strike since Saturday, a statement yesterday from their union QP said that, quote, unpaid work is over. Ground pay, compensation for work flight attendants do when planes are not in the air was a big sticking point. Air Canada's chief operating officer, Mark Nassar, spoke to CBC about the deal. Ground pay is settled. Our flight attendants will be compensated for their time on the ground. And we're so happy that we finally reach this industry leading deal that allows our flight attendants to be compensated for the important work, safety work, customer service work that they perform on the ground. The federal government ordered Air Canada and QP to take part in binding

arbitration just hours after the strike began on Saturday. The union defied that order. So what does this agreement mean for the airline industry more broadly? And what could this strike signal about labor relations in the country? Alison Braley-Ratai is an associate professor in Labor Studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. Alison, good morning. Good morning. How are you? I'm doing well. The deal, of course, still needs to be ratified by the union, but flight attendants will be paid for groundwork now, although at a lower rate, that's according to union sources. Is this a big win then for flight attendants?

I actually think this is a huge win, and I think this labor dispute is a really important one. And in my view, an important dispute is one that has ripple effects beyond its own immediate circumstances. And I think this is one of those for a few reasons. So let's start with the issue of ground pay, which of course has been identified as, you know, one of the, if not the main impasses here. So on Monday we had Air Canada CEO, Mr. Russo, and he was on BNN Bloomberg,

and he was talking about the industry norm that across the globe, flight attendants don't get ground pay. And he said there were a few exceptions. He pointed to a few in North America, and they pay like 50%, right? So they pay less, as you identified, than the hourly wage and for a limited period of time. And he said this by way of comparing what Eric Canada was offering, which was also 50% for a limited time with regard to what their normal hourly wages. And he said this by way of saying that this was a good thing, right? Like Air Canada was sort of stepping up here and was willing to sort of meet them at this point. But there's an alternative framing in what he actually was saying that I think has really been central to our understanding sort of collectively, societally, about what's happening here in the industry. And the alternative framing is that we have a billion dollar industry across the globe that has the exploitation of predominantly female labor baked into its core. Now, that wasn't just framing, of course, but that's actually what he was saying.

So that's the reality we're dealing with, right? And then we have this other thing going on. The workers are ordered back. I'm happy, of course, to talk more about that. But then the union defies it, which is almost unheard of. You know, generally people are law-abiding. You know, they care about the people they serve. They care about their colleagues.

They actually want to be working and, you know, getting paid, living in normal life. They defy this. And where that gets us is a tentative agreement only like nine hours after negotiating because they went back with a mediator. And by leaked reports, the deal is better than what Air Canada was offering. So, and this is my point that I want to make about why this is an important dispute. So as we sit here with everything that's happened, It looks like Air Canada Flight Attendants now lead the pack on ground pay, and that will have ripple effects across the industry.

That's one thing. I'm going to finish up. I know you want to – but there's another two things that are really important to why this is an important dispute. And that's that we have the jobs minister now saying that she's going to launch a probe into this issue. And that was in response to the fact that they were defying the order. The government knew that this was the situation. they knew that they weren't getting paid, but this has now put pressure on the government

to proactively do something about it by sort of looking into it. And the third thing is that it's actually put the government on the ropes with regard to its, you know, reliable use of essentially instant back to work. The liberals are not the only ones guilty of that. The conservatives were also slap happy. Okay, you've gone through a lot.

But now this is public. I have. There's a lot of votes that's important. Yeah, and I just want to talk a little bit about the unpaid work, and we know a lot of the major airlines still do the thing that Air Canada was previously doing, but WestJet will soon be negotiating a contract. Do you think this sets the ground for them to get the same kind of deal? Without a doubt. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the fact that the federal government is now launching a probe into allegations of unpaid work,

is that just them doing an about face to show that they're interested in this now? Oh, I think it is because, I mean, there was a private member's bill from an NDP member last October that made it to first reading, and it was an amendment to the Canada Labor Code, and it was literally entitled remuneration for flight attendance. So it's not like, I mean, I think it probably died on the order papers when, you know, the election came about. I don't know for sure why it didn't get passed first reading. But it's not like they didn't know this. I mean, you know, they're aware of this. But there's no pressure on them. In fact, the Labor Minister at the time, with Steve McKinnon, and he was asked point blank by this member, are you going to support my bill? And his response was, we do minimum standards, we leave the rest for the hard work of collective bargaining. They have an agreement in place, which they did at the time. And so it's not for me to comment. That's a very different response, I think, than what we are now seeing from the jobs minister,

in light of the fact that the union was going to defy this order, to now say, oh, well, you're right, this is a serious. serious issue. I'm going to look into this. I don't think that would have happened if the union had not defied the order. And that's really my point about the importance of this dispute. So it's striking that that's what the employees chose to do, but also that we are seeing the government rely on this section that allows them to order people back to work. Are you concerned that that's something the federal government has been invoking more and more in the last number of years? Absolutely. But I mean, it's really of a piece with back-to-work legislation. So

I mean, there are differences. It allows them to avoid an actual debate in the legislature, which is convenient for a government if it's in a minority situation. But it actually has been used in such a way that, you know, it's worded so that the minister can actually order the otherwise independent administrative tribunal to do what the minister orders. And that makes the, you know, independent administrative tribunal essentially a handmaiden of the labor minister, which I, I don't believe was what the section was conceived of as being when it was written in, you know, decades ago. But I don't think it's terribly different from instant back-to-work legislation that goes through a legislative process when a government has a majority. I mean, they can turn out back-to-work legislation in a matter of days, right? Like a day or two, and they've got you back.

So I think it's really put them on notice that, you know, they give workers a framework in which they can strike. It's already very attenuated. workers cannot lawfully strike very often. And then every time they try to, they basically intervene. Alison, we only have a minute left. But what do you think the impact from this strike will be on the broader labor movement then? I think it will absolutely move the needle. I think the education workers in Ontario in 2022 moved the needle by pressuring the conservative Ontario government to back down from its legislation that had invoked Section 33.

And I think this absolutely moves the needle that much further. by an actual defiance of an otherwise lawful order. And I think it shows the government that, as well it should, that unionized workers, that workers in general are, you know, are important stakeholders in society. We're moms and dads and, you know, shoppers and, you know, we play sports and, you know, we go to the theaters. And, you know, we're regular people.

And it's not appropriate to not intervene in productive ways. And I think now the pressure is on for them to be more productive and how they deal with labor relations. Alison, thank you so much for this. I appreciate it. Great. Thank you very much. Alison Braley-Ratai is an associate professor in Labor Studies at Brock University.

She was in St. Catherine's, Ontario. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.