TORONTO (AP) — The union for 10,000 striking Air Canada flight attendants said Monday they won’t return to work even though the strike, now in its third day, has been declared illegal.
The strike at Canada’s largest airline is affecting about 130,000 travelers a day at the peak of the summer travel season, and the two sides remain far apart on pay and other issues.
Air Canada said rolling cancellations now extend to the afternoon of Tuesday, Aug. 19 after the union defied a second return-to-work order.
The Canada Industrial Relations Board had declared the strike illegal on Monday and ordered the striking flight attendants back on the job. But the union said it will defy this second return to work order, after an earlier one had been ignored. The earlier one also ordered the union to submit to arbitration.
The board, an independent administrative tribunal that interprets and applies Canada’s labor laws, had said the union needed to provide written notice to all of its members by noon Monday that they must resume their duties.
“If it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it. If it means our union being fined. then so be it,” said Mark Hancock, national president for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents Air Canada flight attendants. “We’re looking for a solution here. Our members want a solution here, but a solution has to be found at the bargaining table.”
It was not immediately clear what recourse the board or the government have if the union continues to refuse to return to work.
Labor leaders are objecting to the government’s repeated use of a law that cuts off workers right to strike and forces them into arbitration, as the government has already done in recent years with workers at ports, railways and elsewhere.
“We are in a situation where literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians and visitors to our country are being disrupted by this action,” Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney said. “I urge both parties to resolve this as quickly as possible.”
Carney said his jobs minister would have more to say later and added that it was disappointing that the talks have not led to a deal. He stressed it is important that flight attendants are compensated fairly at all times.
The labor board previously ordered airline staff back to work by 2 p.m. Sunday and for the union to enter arbitration, after the government intervened. Air Canada then said it planned to resume flights Sunday evening. But when the workers refused, the airline said it would resume flights Monday evening instead. However, there was no sign the union would relent.
Air Canada operates around 700 flights per day. The airline estimates 50,000 customers will be disrupted.
Air Canada chief executive Michael Rousseau said he’s still looking for a quick resolution.
“We’re obviously hoping we can go tomorrow, but we’ll make that decision later today,” Rousseau said on BNN Bloomberg shortly after the union announced it would continue with the strike.
Disrupted tourists, stranded passengers
Tourists John and Lois Alderman said Air Canada has told them they could be stranded in Toronto for another four to five days while they wait for a flight back home to Manchester, England.
“I’m a diabetic and I’m going to run out of insulin in about four days,” John said at Pearson International Airport. “That’s going to cause a problem.”
Flight attendants walked off the job around 1 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday after turning down the airline’s request to enter into government-directed arbitration, which allows a third-party mediator to decide the terms of a new contract.
Air Canada and its flight attendants have been in contract talks for about eight months, but remain far apart on the issue of pay and the unpaid work that flight attendants do when planes aren’t in the air.
