Air Canada flight attendants end strike after reaching 'tentative' deal

MONTREAL: Air Canada flight attendants ended their strike on Tuesday after reaching a tentative deal with the carrier, which said it will work to restore full service for its 130,000 daily passengers.

Roughly 10,000 flight attendants walked off the job after midnight Saturday, insisting Air Canada had failed to address their demands for higher pay and compensation for unpaid ground work, including during boarding.

The attendants' union defied two back-to-work orders from a regulatory tribunal, forcing Air Canada to roll back plans to partially restore service.

But after resuming talks on Monday evening, the union said it had reached a viable deal with the airline.

"The strike has ended. We have a tentative agreement we will bring forward to you," the Canadian Union of Public Employees' (CUPE) Air Canada branch said in a statement.

CUPE instructed members to "fully cooperate with resumption of operations."

Air Canada said in a statement that it would "gradually restart its operations" after reaching an agreement with CUPE through a mediator.

It said the first flights were scheduled for Tuesday evening but warned full service may not return for seven to 10 days.

"Restarting a major carrier like Air Canada is a complex undertaking. Full restoration may require a week or more," Air Canada president Michael Rousseau said.

Air Canada's vice president for communications, Christophe Hennebelle, said travellers will face "a few difficult days ahead."

"Our planes are not in the right place, our crews are not in the right place."

Ratification pending

Neither the union nor the airline immediately provided details of the proposed agreement. But CUPE said the deal achieves "transformational change for our industry."

"Unpaid work is over," it added, a reference to a key demand throughout the talks that flight attendants also be compensated for time on the ground.

It is standard practice across much of the commercial aviation industry to only compensate cabin crew for time spent in the air.

Industry experts said CUPE had built an effective public messaging campaign around the issue, but it was not yet clear if they made substantial gains.

Air Canada said it would not comment on the terms of the deal "until the ratification process is complete."

It was not immediately known when CUPE would schedule a vote.

Air Canada — the national carrier which flies directly to 180 cities domestically and abroad — has said the strike forced cancellations impacting 500,000 people.

Over the weekend, federal labor minister Patty Hajdu invoked a legal provision to halt the strike and force both sides into binding arbitration.

Following that intervention, the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB), a regulatory tribunal, ordered the flight attendants back to work in two separate orders -- on Sunday and Monday.

But the union defied both orders, forcing Air Canada to walk back service resumption plans.