Passengers’ grievances were cited more than twice as often as those of flight attendants in major news outlets’ coverage of the recent WestJet strike, an analysis by The Maple has found.
Major television broadcasts and articles cited passengers’ grievances a total of 44 times, while flight attendants’ grievances were cited only 20 times.
The Maple analyzed coverage on the day of the strike, including TV broadcasts by CBC’s The National, CTV National News and Global National, as well as the leading strike story from each August 2 homepage of CBC News, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Global News and CTV News.
An archive of CTV’s homepage on that date was not available through a web archive, so the top strike story on the homepage at 12 p.m. EST the following day was included in The Maple’s analysis instead.
‘Consumer-oriented Coverage’
Larry Savage, a professor in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University, said The Maple’s findings reflect a common framing used by corporate media.
“Passengers are treated as consumers whose inconvenience is the central story, while workers’ concerns and the causes of the labour dispute receive less attention,” Savage said in an email.
“This consumer-oriented coverage can push the underlying issues—such as unpaid work—into the background. Strikes are then presented primarily as interruptions to normal life, with workers implicitly cast as responsible for the inconvenience.”
In one case, on the strike-day broadcast of Global National, passengers’ grievances were noted eight times while the workers’ specific grievances were only mentioned once.
That broadcast also quoted two passengers who were critical of flight attendants for going on strike, without providing a detailed breakdown of how low flight attendants’ wages are — which was the main motivation behind the strike.
“I’m a worker, as well, but … there had to be a better [sic] planning,” one passenger said.
“You can’t strike and don’t have nothing for your customers,” said another.
Flight Attendants Earning $27,725
While most flight attendants were prevented by CUPE from giving media interviews during bargaining, their union had posted a website outlining how little they were paid.
Flight attendants were often making less than minimum wage, the site said, and some were even turning to food banks to survive.
“When you factor in unpaid prep, boarding, and ground holds, a starting flight attendant earns an effective wage of $14.10 to $14.44 an hour, well below the federal minimum wage of $18.15,” the site said.
“A full-time junior flight attendant works roughly 1,920 hours a year but is only paid for 960 flown hours, bringing home just $27,725 a year.”
These specifics were absent from every strike-day TV broadcast and leading story analyzed by The Maple.
A number of the broadcasts and articles also quoted comments by WestJet’s CEO deflecting responsibility for the strike.
“This is incredibly sad,” said Alexis von Hoensbroech on CTV National News the day of the strike. “We want these airplanes to be flying and not to be sitting here on the ground.”
Why So Few Workers?
The union’s own rules are part of the reason why so few individual flight attendants were quoted in these stories.
“Unions do not engage in bargaining outside the bargaining process, so all media requests went to the bargaining committee/executive of the local as they were the only ones able to speak for their members’ collective agreement,” CUPE communications representative Lisa Lambert told The Maple by email.
CUPE’s rule is consistent with other unions, which generally prevent workers from giving interviews on picket lines, as per UFCW’s guide to strikes. Still, information about the flight attendants’ grievances was publicly available for media outlets to cite.
“I think I saw there were some flight attendants who spoke on their own social media platforms about their personal experience of the strike, but any discussion of the bargaining process or negotiations were limited to the few people on that committee,” said Lambert.
CBC was the only outlet to find a creative workaround.
On its live-blog story, which was featured at the top of the site’s homepage on August 2, a former WestJet flight attendant who had left her job was quoted.
“I didn’t leave because I hated the job. I would have loved to stay, and this would have been a really long career for me,” former WestJet worker Calleigh Gingras said.
“But the pay was not viable. The pay was not sustainable, and then the pay, for the working conditions, and the pay being so low for a job that is really hard on your health, I didn’t think it was worth it for me in the long run.”
She also explained that flight attendants were only paid for their hours worked during a flight, but not for boarding and disembarking. “Technically, even if somebody had a medical event on the ground, if somebody was throwing up during boarding, you’re not even paid for that.”
The strike ended after one day when the union and WestJet came to a tentative agreement. The new contract will increase wages and address more of the work flight attendants are unpaid for, said CUPE local president Alia Hussain.
