Air Canada’s cabin crew members vote to reject pay package

Flight staff went on strike for three days in August, causing the cancellation of more than 2,000 flights, before the union and the airline reached a tentative agreement. But the union’s members voted 99.1% against it, according to a statement Saturday.

The two sides will now go back to mediation, so no strike or lockout is expected.

The deal offered an overall compensation increase of around 40% over four years, including pension and benefits, and added provisions for ground pay duty, but was deemed insufficient by cabin crew members. The union said 94.6% of its membership voted.

The airline said on Aug. 29 that if the agreement was not ratified, the wage portion would be referred to mediation, and then go to arbitration if needed.

“Air Canada is fully committed to the mediation and arbitration process,” it said in a statement Saturday after the vote results. “There will be no strike or lock-out, and flights will continue to operate.”

The four-year contract offer included wage hikes of 8% to 12%, retroactive to April 1, and then annual increases of 3%, 2.5% and 2.75% starting next year.

Currently, Air Canada flight attendants are paid only when the aircraft is motion, a common practice in the industry, but one they want to end. The proposed contract for cabin crew offered 60 minutes or 70 minutes of pre-flight pay, depending on the size of the plane, at half the usual hourly rate. That would eventually increase to 70% of the hourly rate.

In 2022, Delta Air Lines Inc. became the first US carrier to pay its flight attendants during boarding time.

Major US airlines negotiated multiyear contracts with their crews over the past 18 months, and some attendants secured boarding pay in the new deals. United Airlines Holdings Inc. is still negotiating.

Air Canada has declined to comment on the value of the compensation offer, but Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Francois Duflot said that the new contract would likely add over C$600 million ($434 million) to costs for the period. The airline paid C$4.9 billion in wages, salaries and benefits last year, representing about 23% of operating costs.