Toronto (Canada) (AFP) – Air Canada said it will resume flying on Sunday after the country’s industrial relations board ordered an end to a strike by 10,000 flight attendants that effectively shut down the airline and snarled summer travel. The Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) “directed Air Canada to resume airline operations and for all Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flight attendants to resume their duties by 14:00 EDT on August 17, 2025,” the airline said in a statement. While it plans to resume flights on Sunday evening, Canada’s flag carrier warned it would take “several days before its operations return to normal.” Some flights are still set to be cancelled over the next seven to 10 days, it added.
Air Canada cabin crew walked off the job early Saturday over a wage dispute. Hours later, Canada’s labor policy minister, Patty Hajdu, invoked a legal provision to halt the strike and force both sides into binding arbitration. “The directive, under section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, and the CIRB’s order, ends the strike at Air Canada that resulted in the suspension of more than 700 flights,” the Montreal-based carrier said.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which is representing the workers, sought wage increases as well as to address uncompensated ground work, including during the boarding process. It had previously said its members would remain on strike until the government formally issued an order that they return to work. It had urged passengers not to go to the airport if they had a ticket for Air Canada or its lower-cost subsidiary Air Canada Rouge.
While it did not immediately issue a response to the back-to-work directive, the CUPE earlier slammed the Canadian government’s intervention as “rewarding Air Canada’s refusal to negotiate fairly by giving them exactly what they wanted.” “This sets a terrible precedent,” it said. The union also pointed out that the chairwoman of CIRB, Maryse Tremblay, previously worked as legal counsel for Air Canada. Tremblay’s ruling on whether to end the strike was “an almost unthinkable display of conflict-of-interest,” the union posted on Facebook.
On Thursday, Air Canada detailed the terms offered to cabin crew, indicating a senior flight attendant would on average make CAN$87,000 ($65,000) by 2027. CUPE has described Air Canada’s offers as “below inflation (and) below market value.” In a statement issued before the strike began, the Business Council of Canada warned an Air Canada work stoppage would exacerbate the economic pinch already being felt from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Canada’s flag carrier counts around 130,000 daily passengers and flies directly to 180 cities worldwide.
© 2024 AFP
