MONTREAL \u2014 Air Canada flight attendants have voted to give their union a strike mandate.<\/p>\n
The Air Canada component of the Canadian Union of Public Employees says members voted 99.7 per cent in favour.<\/p>\n
The mandate does not mean that a strike is guaranteed, only that union members support the measure if the bargaining team decides to call for a work stoppage.<\/p>\n
The vote kicked off July 28 and finished earlier Tuesday, after the airline and union concluded the conciliation process without reaching a deal.<\/p>\n
The two sides have been in contract talks since the start of the year.<\/p>\n
The union, which represents around 10,000 flight attendants, has pointed to key outstanding issues including pay, pensions and unpaid work such as pre-flight safety checks.<\/p>\n
“The company would rather drag their feet than negotiate on the things that matter to our members,” said Wesley Lesosky, president of the union’s Air Canada component, in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, flight attendants have had a chance to weigh in and tell the company it\u2019s time to get serious about negotiating.\u201d<\/p>\n
The airline said it remains committed to the bargaining process and is “eager” to resume discussions.<\/p>\n
“Air Canada is determined to reach a fair and equitable collective agreement that recognizes the contributions of its Flight Attendants and supports the competitiveness and long-term growth of the company,” it said in a statement on its website.<\/p>\n
The airline has cautioned that the vote does not mean a disruption will happen, and noted a potential strike can’t take place until after a 21-day cooling-off period that followed the 60-day conciliation period.<\/p>\n
It said Tuesday that it believes there is “more than enough time” to reach an agreement.<\/p>\n
The cooling-off period would end Aug. 16 at 12:01 a.m. ET, which is the earliest the union can go on strike.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 5, 2025.<\/p>\n
Companies in this story: (TSX:AC)<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 Air Canada flight attendants have voted to give their union a strike mandate. The Air Canada…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[23684,45,49,48,30207,33910,33912,33911],"class_list":["post-49597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-air-canada","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-union-of-public-employees","tag-flight-attendants","tag-strike-mandate","tag-union-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}