By Allison Lampert and David Ljunggren<\/p>\n
MONTREAL\/OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canadian Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu on Thursday urged Air Canada and the union representing its flight attendants to return to the bargaining table to reach a deal that could avert a strike set to start this Saturday.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents the carrier’s 10,000 flight attendants, said Air Canada negotiators have not returned to bargaining and have not responded to a proposal they made earlier this week.<\/p>\n
“We believe the company wants the federal government to intervene and bail them out,” a CUPE spokesperson told Reuters.<\/p>\n
The union added that Air Canada has “been completely missing in action from the bargaining table since Tuesday evening, despite a looming shutdown.”<\/p>\n
In a statement, Hajdu also said Air Canada had asked her to refer the dispute to binding arbitration.<\/p>\n
She said she had asked the union to respond to this request. CUPE has previously said it opposes binding arbitration and wants a negotiated settlement.<\/p>\n
Air Canada was not immediately available for comment.<\/p>\n
The Montreal-based company said on Wednesday it would be cancelling flights from Thursday, as the country’s largest carrier winds down service through Saturday.<\/p>\n
FlightAware data shows Air Canada has, thus far, cancelled only four flights as of Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
A strike would hit the country’s tourism sector during the height of summer travel. Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge carry about 130,000 customers a day.<\/p>\n
Air Canada is also the foreign carrier with the largest number of flights to the U.S.<\/p>\n
U.S. carrier United Airlines, a code share partner of Air Canada, said it is working with customers to get them to their destinations and has issued a travel waiver to help them manage their travel plans.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and David Ljunggren in Ottawa. Additional reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago and Kyaw Soe OO in TorontoEditing by Marguerita Choy)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Allison Lampert and David Ljunggren MONTREAL\/OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canadian Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu on Thursday urged Air Canada…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23684,43561,49,48,30207,33910,44,43562],"class_list":["post-69236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-air-canada","tag-bargaining-table","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-union-of-public-employees","tag-flight-attendants","tag-news","tag-patty-hajdu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69236","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=69236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}