{"id":66008,"date":"2025-08-13T07:40:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T07:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/66008\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T07:40:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T07:40:15","slug":"air-canada-flight-attendants-intend-to-strike-this-weekend-union-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/66008\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Canada flight attendants intend to strike this weekend, union says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A A person watches as an Air Canada plane lands at Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in Montreal, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (Christinne Muschi\/The Canadian Press – image credit) <\/p>\n

The union representing Air Canada’s flight attendants has signalled that its members intend to go on strike this weekend, paving the way for workers to walk off the job as early as Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) gave the carrier a requisite 72-hour notice after the two sides reached an “impasse” in negotiations<\/a>. The earliest their more than 10,000\u00a0workers can walk off the job is on Saturday at 12:58\u00a0a.m. ET.<\/p>\n

CUPE representatives say\u00a0that in response\u00a0to their strike action, Air Canada has issued a notice of lockout starting at 1:30 a.m. ET on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“We do hope that Air Canada will come to some form of rationale and show up at the table and truly engage us in bargaining the final pieces of this,”\u00a0said\u00a0Wesley Lesosky, president of CUPE Air Canada Component.<\/p>\n

The two sides have been negotiating a new collective agreement since March, going over key issues like wages, work rules and unpaid hours.<\/p>\n

Air Canada said late Tuesday afternoon that the two sides were far apart in negotiations.<\/p>\n

CBC News reported earlier on Tuesday that CUPE had declined a proposal<\/a> by Air Canada to resolve the talks through binding interest arbitration, and that both the union and the airline were back to reviewing each others’ proposals. That work went on past midnight on Tuesday, but resulted in the union serving strike notice almost an hour later.<\/p>\n

“The employer rejected our final pass …\u00a0that we gave them on some monetary issues. We wanted to thoroughly review it, but really wanted the members to still be in the forefront of that decision. So it took a lot of discussion,” said\u00a0Lesosky.<\/p>\n

WATCH | The latest on the negotiations before the strike was called:<\/p>\n

Air Canada had said that any passengers booked to travel between Aug. 15 and Aug. 18 can change their flight\u00a0if desired, provided that it was purchased no later than Aug. 13. The airline was also going to allow\u00a0these passengers to change their flights, for free, to another date between Aug. 21 and Sept. 12.<\/p>\n

“If your flight is cancelled, we will do our very best to rebook you on the first available flight, exploring options with over 120 international and domestic carriers,” the airline said\u00a0on its website<\/a>. “As we are in peak summer travel season, we know that space will still be very limited. If your travel is disrupted, you can always choose a refund.”<\/p>\n

CBC\u00a0News has reached out to Air Canada to confirm the lockout notice and for the company’s latest plan\u00a0for passengers who might be affected.<\/p>\n

Story Continues <\/p>\n

“On behalf of the flight attendants, obviously we are sorry and empathetic towards this, but we also need to bargain a collective agreement. And unfortunately, this was the next stage in the process,” said\u00a0Lesosky.<\/p>\n

“I would assume that we’re going to start seeing kind of their ramp down [on Wednesday]. I would certainly hope that they’re not going to leave our members stranded. They’re obviously working to those destinations and should be brought back.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A person watches as an Air Canada plane lands at Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in Montreal, Friday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23684,49,48,30207,42087,42085,33910,44,42088,42086],"class_list":["post-66008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-air-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-union-of-public-employees","tag-collective-agreement","tag-cupe","tag-flight-attendants","tag-news","tag-strike-action","tag-strike-notice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66008","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=66008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}