The Decibel - How the Air Canada strike tested Canada’s labour laws

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

A national strike by Air Canada flight attendants ended on Tuesday morning, three days after it began. One of the key issues that Air Canada and the Canadian Union of Public Employees were fighting over was "ground pay," the amount flight attendants are paid for their work before takeoff and after landing.Jason Kirby is a business reporter for The Globe and Mail. He’s on the show to talk about what we know about the deal so far, and what impact this strike could have on future labour disputes.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

A national strike by Air Canada flight attendants ended early Tuesday morning, three days after it began. This came after the Canada Industrial Relations Board deemed the job action illegal on Monday, following the union's decision to disobey a government order to return to work. One of the issues the sides were fighting over was something called ground pay. That refers to the amount flight attendants are paid for their work before takeoff and after landing. Details of the deal struck between Air Canada and the union representing the employees were still emerging as of Tuesday evening. One of the details we've learned about this new agreement, which must be voted on by the union members, is that flight attendants would be paid between 50 and 70% of their hourly work.

wage for that pre- and post-flight work. The new agreement also includes hourly raises, ranging from about 16 to 20 percent over the life of the contract. And while the work stoppage may be over, a lot of questions remain. First, what will happen to the thousands of passengers affected by the grounded flights? And what will be the political fallout for the Carney government for trying to force flight attendants back to work. Jason Kirby is a business reporter for the globe.

He has been covering the strike and is here to explain how the government was able to order the workers back to their jobs, what might happen to union leaders for snubbing the order, and what this means for future labor disputes. I'm Susan Krishinsky-Robertson, guest hosting The Decible from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Jason. us. Thanks for having me on. So, Jason, we're talking at about 3.30 on Tuesday. Air Canada and QB, the union representing flight attendants, have reached a deal. We're going to talk about the implications for workers in a second, but there have been at least half a million people stranded

by this disruption in the meantime. What are the implications for them at this point? Operations are resuming. Does that mean the trouble's over? Far from it. It's going to take 7, 10 days, at least probably even a little bit more than that for them to, for the airline to be able to get its flights up and running fully, you know, there's still going to be more cancellations, unfortunately. So, you know, when you've got half a million people whose flights have been postponed, a chunk of them are still waiting to board. So they're going to get priority. So that's going to bump other people. There's a whole bunch of things like if a plane's been sitting on the tarmac for more than 72 hours, it needs for regulatory and safety reasons, it has to be taken in

and all these inspections done to make sure everything's fine on it. Crews, you know, have not come home now and, you know, so they can't run immediate, you know, return flights the way they normally would. So they're restarting this giant engine and it's going to take a lot of trouble and pain probably before they can get it completely back up to smooth flying. Yeah, so even a relatively short disruption can create a backlog that takes much longer to clear essentially. Exactly, Air Canada said at one point, a single day of,

of the strike basically added three days to the amount of time that it would take to restart operations. That's incredible. Wow. So let's get into the nitty-gritty of what happened over the course of this labor dispute. Can you walk us through the mechanism that the government tried to use to force the end of the strike? Yeah. So after the strike began, basically what happened was the jobs minister, Patty Heidu. She turned to this section 107 of the Canada Labor Code. and basically it gives her the power to instruct the Canada Industrial Relations Board, kind of this independent tribunal, to order the workers back to work. They didn't wait very long for that.

They initiated it right away. And they had a hearing overnight on Saturday nights and then issued this order on Sunday saying, okay, the workers have to go back to work, but they didn't. And the government has used this before, right? The government has used Section 107 a number of times just in the like the last year. We saw it used to stop the strikes with rail workers, port strikes, Canada Post. It's been used several times in federally regulated sectors. That's where it applies to.

And can you just connect the dots a little bit for us? So as you say, Federal Jobs Minister, Patty Heidu, directed the CIRB, the Canada Industrial Relations Board, to order the flight attendants back to work. But the CIRB is supposed to be an independent body, right? How does that work? Well, they're an independent tribunal that hears and kind of decides labor complaints in federally regulated workplaces. And Section 107 does, you know, it's like literally 63 words in the sprawling Canada labor code. And it basically gives the minister the authority to maintain and secure industrial peace by directing the board to do whatever the minister deems is necessary.

So for 63 words, it kind of carries a very open-ended definition of what the minister's powers are. And basically, the government has been using this to shut down labor on rest on numerous occasions. That's a pretty powerful paragraph. There was also some tension right around the chair of the CIRB. There was after the initial minister's order was sent. The CIRB's chair, Maris Trombly, was actually. in a past career, one of the in-house counsel for Air Canada, and she had done work for them as recently as 2022, the union, QP union, you know, immediately said there's a potential bias

in the eyes of the public. They stressed, you know, we're not accusing you of having bias, but there's the potential perception of bias. Ultimately, what happened was the chair, she ruled that under Section 107, basically she's a rubber stand. to just put in motion whatever the minister ordered, and that is exactly what they were doing at that point. Right. So no need to recuse yourself from a decision you're not making. There was no decision to be made at that point in that initial order.

Understood. So as you mentioned, this is not the first time that we've seen Section 107 used in these kinds of disputes. Do you have a sense of why we've seen the government use this mechanism more often? Yeah, there's a few things to it. I mean, in the past you would see, especially under the Harper government, There was a lot of back-to-work legislation, and they would pass that in Parliament. In fact, there was the threat of back-to-work legislation that compelled the flight attendants and different airline unions back in, you know, last decade to sign 10-year agreements under the threat

that you basically didn't have a right to strike. But what happened was in 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that striking is a constitutional right. it's it's like an integral part of the collective bargaining process for a worker to be able to withhold their services and that changed the dynamic basically it raised a bar for for passing back to work legislation there has been a couple of instances but it it really dropped off after that you also had the in 2015 the Trudeau government came in with the majority which they subsequently lost just before the pandemic you know hit and then you had the inflation period that followed that and people's incomes were eroded by that.

And throughout this whole time, a lot of these unions had been locked in with these longer contracts. So there's all these things that were there when you had this wave of labor unrest after the inflationary bout after the pandemic. And what you had is basically they found this Section 107, you know, that had been there for a very long time, but had not been used in this way at all. And basically, it's allowed them to do. an end run around both the Supreme Court's ruling that pertains to legislation and it's a lot faster as well because, as we saw, it literally takes the minister just saying issuing an order to the CIRB, the labor board, and then the labor board promptly rubber

stamps it. And then in all the instances up until now, workers have complied, the unions have complied and workers have gone back to their jobs. And you've also seen this busy period for labor unrest because when inflation hits, of course, it erodes people's buying power and that can lead to labor unrest when people want to advocate for better pay. Totally, totally. The whole history of labor unrest and inflation, it's like literally, you know, inflation spikes and it's followed by labor unrest shortly after. So if the Supreme Court ruled at that turning point you mentioned in 2015 that the right to strike was constitutionally protected, wouldn't the use of Section 107 get in the way of people's right to strike? The union certainly say,

that, labor exports, I'll say that. The thing is, you know, after each time that it's been used, the unions, the various unions have filed complaints, basically appeals and arguments with courts saying, you know, this is an infringement on our constitutional right. And there are a lot of cases winding their way through federal court all around Section 107, use of Section 107. But those cases, it's a slow process. I mean, none of them have been decided. There's been no court test at this point of whether use of Section 107 is also an infringement of the constitutional right to strike. And it's going to take five, ten years at least, really, probably before any of those cases get to that point where they're at the Supreme Court and Supreme Court makes that ruling. So you had this, all the other unions, you know, that had been dealt with this have kind of followed that path.

And that's exactly why this situation kind of stands out so much because this was the first time any of the unions said, no, we're drawing a line in the sand. We're going to continue to strike, even though you've ruled that it's illegal. Just openly defying the government. Openly defying. The union leader, Mark Hancock, basically said, you know, you can fine us if you want. You can throw me in jail. We're not backing down. So basically, labor leaders and experts are seeing this as a chance to directly challenge this part of the law that.

It was the most direct challenge the government has faced on this yet. While all these cases are going through the courts slowly and slowly slogging their way through, this was just like getting right in the face of the government in a very loud way and saying, no, we're not going to take it. We'll be right back. So, Jason, this strike was determined to be illegal on Monday morning. Can we talk about the implications of that? When was the last time we've seen unions defy back-to-work legislation?

And what happened then? Yeah, I mean, we actually did see unions defy back-to-work legislation on Ontario not too long ago with the education workers. You know, the four government passed legislation saying, you know, you have to go to binding arbitration and it's illegal for you to go on strike. And promptly 55,000 workers, you know, walked off the job and it forced the government's hand and they back down. And that was a victory, again, by the same union, different part of it, but the same QP union.

But you really have to go back to the 1970s for like the starkest example. It was a postal strike that was back to work legislation. The union refused to end the strike. They kept it going. And ultimately, the head of that union at that time was, you know, sentenced to three months in prison. And there was a lot of fines and he served two months in prison for that. So, you know, I in this case, you know, over the weekend, I asked Mark Hancock, the national president of QPee, I said, you know, your strike is now illegal.

Actually, I was speaking to right at 2 o'clock as the order, the initial order kind of kicked in that, you know, as of 2 o'clock, you have to end this strike. And I said, well, it's 201 right now. It's an illegal strike. Are you prepared to go to jail? And his response at that time was hell yeah. So I knew that this was going to be continuing like that for a while. So it's quite striking. Let's take a moment to talk about what sets this.

strike apart from other labor disputes we've seen over the last 18 months. What do you think makes this strike different? Why would union leaders think this was the fight to continue, despite the risks that come with striking illegally? Just to step back, one of the reasons this has been so frustrating to different unions is when you have back-to-work legislation and especially Section 107, the way it's been executed, it basically is seen by unions as favoring the employers. Employers have almost got addicted to the idea, as one of the labor experts I spoke with, put it.

An employer knows that if they just say, hey, this is going to create economic crisis, you know, go to the federal government and say, there's a crisis here. The federal government is going to turn to Section 107 and order the workers back to work. That takes away, again, one of like the central, there's a reason that you're allowed to strike,

that it's constitutionally protected, because that is how you get, concessions from the other side. And if you're not allowed to strike, if immediately the first thing that happens is you're, you know, ordered back to work, you've lost all of that power. Right. Why would an employer come to the table to negotiate in good faith if they just know that this trigger is going to get pulled? Exactly, exactly. This particular case was interesting with the flight attendants for a number of reasons. One, they were very livid. So they were very fired up. We saw that, you know, anybody who watched the news and TV like they're, this is a

a group of employees who were ready and unwilling to, you know, stick this out. You also had an interesting situation that the pilots had settled. You know, they also had a 10-year contract that they'd come off of. Air Canada managed to settle with them, mostly men. And in the case of the flight attendants, 70% are women. There was at least a perception that, you know, there's a gender inequality at play here. And interestingly, one of the things that made this particular case a challenge for using Section 107 comes down to one of the sticking points

that we heard from the flight attendants. One of their demands had to do with ground pay, the fact that any of the work that they were doing on the ground before the flight takes off, they don't get paid for. Likewise, after it lands, or if there's a delay, you could sit around at the airport for hours. You're having to usher passengers around and potentially do things, but you're not getting paid for any of that.

And that's an industry practice. That wasn't just Air Canada. It was an industry practice. And the problem here is if you were to say, okay, we're going to send this to binding arbitration, an arbitrator is going to have to make a decision in this case and come up with what it deems to be a fair agreement. There's no way that an arbitrator is going to make a ruling or decide to change an industry practice.

You know, they're not going to wait in and say, okay, we're going to reset this standard for how the entire airline industry works. So by sending it to basically arbitration, you are basically de facto favoring the employer because you know that on this key, key point that the flight attendants wanted to fight for, there's no way that an arbitrator is going to find in their favor. They're going to say, well, the practice in the rest of the industry is that you don't get paid, so we're just going to stick with that. And that really made this a case that I think the union was willing to fight on and draw that line in the sand for that reason. And another big difference here seems to me that also this is an issue of public support, right? This is a very visible workforce as compared to maybe some of the other strikes we've seen recently. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely part of it as well.

We know despite all the anger and frustration passengers who are having, there still seem to be this support for flight attendants in this, not universal in any way, but a larger support for them than certainly than you would have seen in postal workers. There was not support for the postal workers when they went on strike. when it's a railroad engineer or it's a somebody who are a dock worker, it's out of the field of vision. People don't think about it. People don't see them. But the flight attendant is that person, you know, that you see and you deal with any time you're on a plane, you know, serving you.

And so it is just more in your face that way. And you have a greater personal connection. So I think that's a big part of it. So those previous strikes were all under the Trudeau government. And this has been the first real test for. Mark Carney's government now. How does all of this shake out for them? I think we're going to see that this has seriously taken Section 107 off the table as an option for the government. Even though ultimately we've not had a court ruling on it, we know that in the end there has been a settlement

in the Air Canada strike, but it is really, I think, galvanized unions who represent federal workers across the country that it's going to be a lot harder. You know, they've seen what results. Just say, I'm not going to accept your back-to-work order. And in this case, you know, some sort of settlement has come out of this that the union seems very happy with. So, you know, I think we're going to see that. And we do have some more labor, potential labor disputes coming, the public sector, PSAC later on this fall, which is federal workers. their contracts coming up, WestJet flight attendants, jazz flight attendants. They're going to be starting negotiations at the end of the year as well.

So we still have some more cases. You know, this is kind of just a rolling thing. There's always different contracts coming up and affecting thousands of workers. I think Section 107, there's going to be a great hesitancy on the part of the government to use that in the future. And does this put additional pressure on unions too, now that we've seen this one union defy this. Will other union memberships be expecting a similar pushback for their own? I think they certainly will. You know, it's not going to be enough, I don't think, for a union to just say, okay, well, everybody accept this, go back to work.

We're going to file some, you know, appeals through the courts and, you know, come back to us in 10 years and we'll see how it turns out. I don't think that that's going to happen. And we did see, you know, on Sunday night, the Canadian Labor Congress, kind of the overall affiliate for organizing. for a whole bunch of different unions in Canada, basically through their support behind this. They said, we're going to do whatever it takes to back you guys. They talked about creating financial funds to help pay for fines because that was certainly one of the things that the union faced was if they hadn't come to a agreement, at some point maybe there was going to be a call for the leadership to be sent in store or fines, large fines issued.

And so the other unions were starting to rally around this because they see this as a moment that they've finally been able to push back against the government on this. So the future of this legal mechanism we saw used here could basically effectively be decided before this ever gets to the Supreme Court? I think that there's a great likelihood that that's the case. Maybe we'll see it come back up again. Maybe there'll be a case where it's used again. But it might be the case that the court is going to rule in the future on something that hasn't been used in a very long. long time because of what happened over the last weekend. Jason, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks so much. That was Jason Kirby, a reporter for the Globe's report on business.

That's it for today. I'm Susan Krishinsky-Robertson. Our producers are Medline White, Mikhail Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thank you for listening, and I'll be talk to you soon.