by Bob McGuire

Calgary, Alberta, Canada—Flight attendants at Air Canada went on strike Aug. 16, and took on the Canadian government the following day. In less than four days they extracted from their bosses a tentative contract that the 10,000 strikers in the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) can now vote on. Hours after they walked off the job, demanding to be paid for all the hours they worked and wage increases that could offset ten years of inflation, the Jobs Minister in Mark Carney’s Liberal government invoked the infamous Section 107 of the Labour Relations Code. She ordered the Canada Industrial Relations Board to force all the picketers back to work and to impose binding arbitration.

THE STRIKE CONTINUED

On the morning of Aug. 17, flight attendants at a mass rally of more than 100 at Calgary Airport made clear that they would defiantly continue to strike—perfectly legally—until 2:00 PM. Then they shocked both bosses and government by rejecting the back-to-work order, despite threats of imprisonment and stiff fines, and continuing the nationwide strike.

Air Canada, which had stalled negotiations for eight months while counting on government intervention for protection, reluctantly returned to the bargaining table the next day. Within nine hours, there was a tentative contract that union flight attendants will be voting on. They had authorized their strike with a 99.7% vote, with 94.5% of the membership participating: they will likely be just as involved in the vote over ratification of a contract that CUPE leaders told members meant “unpaid work is over.”

Until flight attendants went on strike, most other Canadian workers and the general public had no idea that they would report for pre-flight duty, and perform all the safety procedures that passengers would witness, and not be paid a nickel until the plane moved to take off. Upon landing, their pay would stop long before passengers began unbuckling their seatbelts. The unpaid time amounted to as much as a day’s pay lost in every week, according to some flight attendants.

Strikers got that information out effectively: more than a few of the stranded passengers that reporters talked to even said they were stuck far from home, but still supported flight attendants demanding to get paid for every hour of work. Even Air Canada realized it had to settle.

Every major union in Canada stood in solidarity with the strikers. The solidarity was a two-way street, as CUPE has successfully defied the government invoking Section 107, and may dissuade further reliance on it to prop up Canada’s largest companies during labor disputes. The previous government under Justin Trudeau forced Canada Postal workers back to work for 180 days just before Christmas, undermining their strike to prevent a Canada Post demand for a part-time weekend workforce turning steady work into gig jobs.

FLIGHT ATTENDANTS SHOW THE WAY FORWARD

Prime Minister Mark Carney was elected in March to head, in effect, a national unity government to oppose Trump’s economic and political (and military?) designs on Canada. The Liberal vote count had increased by about the same number of votes lost by the trade union-connected New Democratic Party. Canada’s previously enacted anti-scab law that went into effect on July 1 forced the delivery company DHL to end its use of scabs and settle with striking workers, but the use of Section 107 to keep the economy strong has become all too common.

Now that flight attendants have defied it, maybe other strikers will be less likely to have it used against them.

Likewise, coal miners striking in the U.S. during World War II were opposed not just by coal operators and the FDR government, but by most unions. Communist union leaders who opposed the war while Hitler and Stalin were allies turned around and demanded no-strike pledges after Hitler invaded Russian-controlled territory in June 1941. It was after this successful United Mine Workers strike in 1943 that federal wage and hours enforcement was reinterpreted in 1945 to make “portal-to-portal” pay the rule for coal miners. Hours of their work had always been stolen by coal operators, who did not pay miners until they reached the coal face, even if it took an hour or more to be transported there. Now, 80 years later, flight attendants at Air Canada have been able to frame the core issue of their strike as a battle for portal-to-portal pay for themselves, and gain the support of Canadians in overwhelming numbers.