Wait, flight attendants don't get paid until the plane takes off?

Air Canada's flight attendants are in the midst of a rather nasty labour dispute between the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and Air Canada management over pay and unpaid work.

Some 10,000 flight attendants walked off the job after eight months of negotiations failed to yield any agreements between the sides. The government then promptly legislated them back to work, albeit using a rather suspect law calling for government action "to maintain or secure industrial peace". However, CUPE then refused to comply with the back-to-work legislation, putting things in a rather unprecedented state of affairs.

Now, I don't know how much flight attendants get paid, and whether they are indeed as underpaid as they claim. But Air Canada's offer of 38% over four years sounds pretty generous to me, and would make Air Canada's flight attendants the best paid in the country, although it was apparently not generous enough for CUPE. Specifically, CIUPE is saying that 8% in the first year is inadequate "because of inflation" - er, inflation is around 2%!

On the other issue of unpaid work, though, I think their case is stronger, even though this is an industry-wide issue. I think most people have been shocked to find out that flight attendants don't get paid until the plane is actually moving, nor after the plane stops moving moving at the end of the flight. So, when they have to stand there welcoming you aboard with that glazed smile on their faces; when they are playing tetris with your overhead bags; when they are sitting there bored stiff as take off is delayed for two hours for "operational issues"; or when the plane arrives early and there is no gate for it to stop at? Nope, they are not getting paid.

CUPE estimates that flight attendants typically work an average of 35 hours a week for free - almost a full week's work - so that the most junior flight attendants are effectively making less than the minimum hourly wage.

Now, you could argue that this is just the nature of the beast, and that the pay they receive during official paid time is sufficient to make up for this. Certainly, it is something they agree to when they take the job. But you have to admit that this is not a logical position. If flight attendants are dressed in uniforms and exposed to the stupid questions of passengers, then logically they should be being paid.

But this is not just an Air Canada problem: most airlines follow a similar procedure. According to an NPR article from early 2024, most airlines only pay their staff from the moment when the plane door are closed. The airlines typically justify this by arguing that they also have a "guarantee of minimum pay" mechanism, although from the description given, this really doesn't make up for the unpaid time, I wouldn't say.

Only one major North American airline, Delta Airlines, pays their flight attendants 50% of their regular hourly wage for a set 40-50 minutes of boarding. (Some argue that this is Delta's way of discouraging unionization - it is the only major North American airline whose flight attendants are not unionized.) As of earlier this year, Porter Airlines pays its flight staff for some, but not all, boarding time. Pascan Aviation, a small regional Quebec airline, is one of the very few airlines to pay staff 100% for their pre- and post-flight work.

Air Canada says it is offering an industry-leading package on ground pay as part of the current negotiations, which the union is still saying is not enough. Both the Conservatives and the NDP introduced bills during the last session of parliament that would correct this apparent oversight, but neither bill made it through Parliament before the prorogation and snap election earlier this year. And now, the governing Liberals have announced a "probe" into these allegations of unpaid work, which they find "deeply disturbing".

Most airlines, then, do not pay their flight attendants for anything outside of actually flying. As to whether that's a big deal or not, I'm not really sure. But unionized Air Canada staff sure think so. It's hard to know whether to be sympathetic or not. 

Either way, you have to think that, however this one turns out, WestJet,  Air Transat and others are queueing up right now for their own kick of the same can.

UPDATE

The deal struck between Air Canada and CUPE, as well as a pretty generous increase in pay, does indeed include a provision for ground pay: at least an hour of ground work paid at 50% of regular rates, rising incrementally to 70%. 

It is being hailed as industry-changing, although it's notable that when non-unionized Delta brought in a similar provision back in 2022, it did not result in an immediate rush by other unionized airlines to follow suit.

Of course, depending on your worldview, you could also see this as a bit of a scam. Airlines the world over have been operating under this model for decades, and neither the unions nor the employees have made that much of a stink about it heretofore. It's just how the job works. Was it really, then, all about leveraging public support, creating a sob-story narrative in support of a regular gimme-more-money labour dispute?