{"id":152448,"date":"2025-08-17T06:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T06:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/152448\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T06:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T06:22:09","slug":"government-forces-air-canada-and-flight-attendants-back-to-work-and-into-arbitration-after-strike-strands-over-100000-travelers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/152448\/","title":{"rendered":"Government forces Air Canada and flight attendants back to work and into arbitration, after strike strands over 100,000 travelers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canada\u2019s government forced\u00a0Air Canada<\/a>\u00a0and its striking flight attendants back to work and into arbitration Saturday after a work stoppage stranded more than 100,000 travelers around the world during the peak summer travel season.<\/p>\n

Federal Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu said now is not the time to take risks with the economy, noting the\u00a0unprecedented tariffs<\/a>the U.S. has imposed on Canada. The intervention means the\u00a010,000 flight attendants<\/a>\u00a0will return to work soon.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s action came less than 12 hours after workers walked off the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe talks broke down. It is clear that the parties are not any closer to resolving some of the key issues that remain and they will need help with the arbitrator,\u201d Hajdu said.<\/p>\n

Hajdu said the full resumption of services could take days, noting it is up to the Canada Industrial Relations Board. Meanwhile, Wesley Lesosky, president of the Air Canada Component of the CUPE union, accused the government of violating the flight attendants\u2019 constitutional right to strike \u2014 and decried Hajdu for only waiting hours to intervene.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Liberal government is rewarding Air Canada\u2019s refusal to negotiate fairly by giving them exactly what they wanted,\u201d Lesosky said.<\/p>\n

Air Canada did not immediately have additional comments when reached Saturday afternoon. But Air Canada Chief Operating Officer Mark Nasr previously said it could take up to a week to fully restart operations. It\u2019s likely that travelers will continue to see disruptions in the coming days.<\/p>\n

Existing agreement will stay in place through arbitration<\/p>\n

The shutdown of Canada\u2019s largest airline early Saturday is impacting\u00a0about 130,000 people a day<\/a>, and some 25,000 Canadians may be stranded. Air Canada operates around 700 flights per day.<\/p>\n

According to numbers from aviation analytics provider Cirium, Air Canada had canceled a total of 671 flights by Saturday afternoon \u2014 following 199 on Friday. And another 96 flights scheduled for Sunday were already suspended.<\/p>\n

Hajdu ordered the Canada Industrial Relations Board to extend the term of the existing collective agreement until a new one is determined by the arbitrator.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanadians rely on air travel every day, and its importance cannot be understated,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Union spokesman Hugh Pouliot didn\u2019t immediately know what day workers would return to work. \u201cWe\u2019re on the picket lines until further notice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The bitter contract fight escalated Friday as the union turned down Air Canada\u2019s prior request to enter into government-directed arbitration, which allows a third-party mediator to decide the terms of a new contract.<\/p>\n

\u2018Such little progress has been made\u2019<\/p>\n

Flight attendants walked off the job around 1 a.m. EDT on Saturday. Around the same time, Air Canada said it would begin locking flight attendants out of airports.<\/p>\n

Ian Lee, an associate professor at Carleton University\u2019s Sprott School of Business, earlier noted the government repeatedly intervenes in transportation strikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will intervene to bring the strike to an end. Why? Because it has happened 45 times from 1950 until now,\u201d Lee said. \u201cIt is all because of the incredible dependency of Canadians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, the government\u00a0forced the country\u2019s two major railroads into arbitration<\/a>\u00a0with their labor union during a work stoppage. The union for the rail workers is suing, arguing the government is removing a union\u2019s leverage in negotiations.<\/p>\n

The Business Council of Canada had urged the government to impose binding arbitration in this case, too. And the Canadian Chamber of Commerce welcomed the intervention.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith valuable cargo grounded and passengers stranded, the government made the right decision to refer the two sides to binding arbitration,\u201d said Matthew Holmes, the executive vice president for the Chamber of Commerce \u2014 adding that \u201cclose to a million Canadians and international visitors could be impacted\u201d if it takes Air Canada a week to be fully operational again.<\/p>\n

Hajdu maintained that her Liberal government is not anti-union, saying it is clear the two sides are at an impasse.<\/p>\n

Travelers<\/a> in limbo<\/p>\n

Passengers whose flights are impacted will be eligible to request a full refund on the airline\u2019s website or mobile app, according to Air Canada.<\/p>\n

The airline said it would also offer alternative travel options through other Canadian and foreign airlines when possible. Still, it warned that it could not guarantee immediate rebooking because flights on other airlines are already full \u201cdue to the summer travel peak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many travelers expressed frustration over Air Canada\u2019s response to the strike.<\/p>\n

Jean\u2010Nicolas Reyt, 42, said he had heard little from Air Canada just hours before his upcoming flight from France scheduled for Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s stressful is to not hear anything from Air Canada,\u201d said Reyt, who is trying to return to Montreal, where he is an associate professor of organizational behavior at McGill University. He said he only received one email from the airline on Thursday warning of potential strike disruptions, but had no further information as of Saturday evening in Cannes, where he was visiting family.<\/p>\n

Reyt assumes his upcoming flight could be canceled \u2014 much like the scores of other lengthy disruptions this weekend. \u201cI\u2019m just very surprised that Air Canada let it go this far,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s really a bit disheartening that they fly you somewhere abroad and then they just don\u2019t fly you back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jennifer MacDonald, of Halifax, Nova<\/a> Scotia, expressed similar frustration. She has been trying to help her brother and cousin get home to Edmonton, Alberta since the second leg of their Air Canada trip was canceled during what was supposed to be a 1-hour layover in Montreal on Friday night.<\/p>\n

The two had to pay $300 out of their own pocket for a hotel, MacDonald said. All Saturday morning, they tried to look for rebooking options, but everything was sold out, she added. Eventually, they opted to book a new flight for Aug. 22 out of Halifax, with another family member volunteering to make an eight-hour drive to pick them up in Montreal and bring them back east on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be a multiday ordeal and a multi thousand dollar trip,\u201d MacDonald said. But as stressful as the disruptions have been, she added that her family stands in solidarity with the flight attendants. \u201cWe hope that Air Canada lifts the lockout and negotiates fairly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the news of the Canadian government forcing arbitration on Saturday, Reyt also expressed concern for Air Canada\u2019s flight attendants. \u201cI think the flight attendants are making some reasonable arguments,\u201d he said, adding that he hopes the intervention isn\u2019t \u201ca way just to silence them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sides are far apart on pay<\/p>\n

Air Canada and the Canadian Union of Public Employees have been in contract talks for about eight months, but they have yet to reach a tentative deal.<\/p>\n

Both sides say they remain far apart on the issue of pay and the unpaid work flight attendants do when planes aren\u2019t in the air.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are heartbroken for our passengers. Nobody wants to see Canadians stranded or anxious about their travel plans but we cannot work for free,\u201d Natasha Stea, an Air Canada flight attendant and local union president, said before the government intervention was announced.<\/p>\n

The attendants are about 70% women. Stea said Air Canada pilots, who are male dominated, received a significant raise last year and questioned whether they are getting fair treatment.<\/p>\n

The airline\u2019s latest offer included a 38% increase in total compensation, including benefits and pensions over four years, that it said \u201cwould have made our flight attendants the best compensated in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the union pushed back, saying the proposed 8% raise in the first year didn\u2019t go far enough because of inflation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s government forced\u00a0Air Canada\u00a0and its striking flight attendants back to work and into arbitration Saturday after a work…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":152449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[47499,64,2147,1607,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-152448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-airline-industry","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-strikes","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115042670566278423","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}