Six months after striking flight attendants at Air Canada courageously defied an unjust back-to-order, the federal government has finally released its promised study of unpaid work in the airline industry.
The results are, unsurprisingly, a disappointment.
According to the government’s “what we heard” report, airline payment practices largely meet the statutory requirements set out in the Canada Labour Code, though Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu says her department still needs more data to fully determine if the low pay earned by part-time and low seniority workers at some airlines transgresses the law.
It appears the government has “concluded that the abuse of unpaid work by multi-billion dollar airlines is not a problem worth fixing,” according to the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ (CUPE) Airline Division.
One of the outcomes of last August’s historic strike at Air Canada was a commitment from the government to “probe” the union’s allegation that flight attendants perform dozens of hours of unpaid work per month.
During the strike, Hajdu agreed that “nobody should work for free in this country,” and announced a plan to hold stakeholder consultations with employers, unions, and other industry stakeholders to investigate the union’s claim.
At the time, Hajdu indicated that she was concerned to learn if there were loopholes in the Canada Labour Code that allowed airlines to compel flight attendants to perform unpaid work. Identifying the mechanisms causing flight attendants to work uncompensated could result in new legislation, the minister said.
However, it seems this framing of the issues generated a problem with the scope of the government’s inquiry, as laid out in a discussion paper and set of questions released ahead of stakeholder meetings.
The unpaid work probe undertook to study not if flight attendants are being paid for all work hours at their negotiated wages but rather if their pay structure meets the minimum wage requirements set out in the Canada Labour Code.
As the final report details, flight attendants are paid through a “credit-based system” that includes “block hours” for flights, supplemented by other “minimum guarantees” and non-wage benefits, such as in-flight meals and per-diem allowances. In other words, most flight attendants are neither hourly nor salaried employees. Their pay structure, bargained into union contracts with the airlines, is complex and therefore makes a straightforward demarcation of paid and unpaid time difficult.
From the union’s perspective, the existence of unpaid work is obvious. As CUPE has said for years, flight attendants are expected to spend dozens of hours per month performing work outside of their “block hours” that are, for all intents and purposes, unpaid.
However, because union negotiated pay has traditionally included both wage rates for time spent in the air and other monetary entitlements for duties on the ground, saying the latter are “unpaid” is somewhat ambiguous.
What the government therefore concerned itself with in its investigation was whether or not flight attendants’ total compensation spread over all hours on the job equals at least the minimum wage.
For airlines to meet their statutory requirements under the Canada Labour Code, workers need to earn at least the federal minimum wage (currently $17.75) for all hours on the job. In other words, a flight attendant’s “block hours,” plus meal allowance and other monetary benefits must equal $17.75 for each hour on the job.
I doubt this is what flight attendants had in mind when they demanded that ground work be fairly compensated.
There also appears to be continued disagreement between the union and the airlines over what counts as work or working time, despite the report claiming the parties saw eye-to-eye on this point.
As the union put it, “Flight attendants perform work in a unique environment where travel itself is an essential component of the job. Working time must therefore include all hours spent at the employer’s disposal, regardless of whether operational delays fall within the employer’s direct control.” This definition of working time follows what is outlined in the policy guide used for federal labour standards enforcement.
The airlines, however, want to continue to discount much of what flight attendants do through various forms of non-wage remuneration.
As CUPE pointed out in its submission letter to Hajdu, unless there is shared agreement about what constitutes “work” at the airlines, there can be no resolution of issues related to uncompensated time on the job.
For the union, all the time that flight attendants spend under the employer’s control — including passing through airport security, travelling to assigned aircraft, waiting during operational delays, boarding and safety preparations, time onboard at the gate, flight time, deplaning responsibilities, travel between assignments, waiting for subsequent flights, transportation to hotels prior to rest periods, and time spent on reserve or standby — is work and should therefore be treated as such for the purposes of calculating hours and pay.
Airlines are predictably happy with the government report’s conclusions. CUPE, on the other hand, is still urging passage of an NDP private member’s bill that would ensure flight attendants are paid their negotiated hourly rates for all time worked.
The government’s only proposed solution at this stage, by contrast, is for airlines to perform wage compliance self-audits to ensure they are meeting the minimum wage requirements of the Canada Labour Code. The federal Labour Program will also bring airline officials and union representatives together to further review these legislative requirements as well as airline payroll information.
CUPE’s Airline Division is understandably unhappy with the report’s findings.
As Wesley Lesosky, president of the Airline Division of CUPE, said in a union press release: “Even airlines like Air Canada and Porter — who reluctantly offered ground duty premiums at 50 per cent hourly rate — acknowledge that unpaid work exists in the airline industry. How, then, is the government keeping a straight face as it tells Canadians and workers in this industry that unpaid work does not exist?”
As CUPE has made clear, they have no faith that Air Canada or other airlines will do the right thing and ensure all hours of work are fairly compensated. It’s now clear, if it wasn’t already, that the federal government will be of little help either.
In many ways, it’s back to the drawing board. Last month’s lacklustre arbitrated wage settlement left workers with pay rates they already voted to reject. Now, the unpaid work probe has largely validated a compensation structure that flight attendants struck to overturn.
These outcomes further underline that only deep organizing and collective action can win the changes flight attendants demand. Through withdrawing their labour last summer, Air Canada workers showed the power of collective action. In the not-too-distant future, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them do it again.
Recent Class Struggle Issues
- March 4 | Amazon ‘Breached’ B.C. Labour Code By Denying Pay Increase
- February 23 | Liberals To Blame For CUPE’s Subpar Air Canada Settlement
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