Flight attendants represented by CUPE have launched a national campaign to draw attention to what it says is widespread "unpaid work," but industry experts explain to Open Jaw that the issue is not so simple.
CUPE represents approximately 18,500 flight attendants at ten Canadian airlines who claim the average flight attendant in Canada works unpaid for 35 hours every month.
According to Wesley Lesosky, a flight attendant with CUPE 4094 and president of CUPE’s Airline Division, “Much of the Canadian public has no idea that when flight attendants are doing their pre-flight safety checks, or assisting passengers with boarding, or helping passengers when their plane is delayed at the gate after a long journey, that the flight attendant isn’t even being paid. It’s a dirty secret in this industry and one that we’re determined to expose and end for good.
“If we’re at work, in uniform, doing our jobs and taking responsibility for our passengers, we should be getting paid – simple as that,” Lesosky added in the union's press release about its new public campaign.
The campaign, referred to as "Unpaid Work Won't Fly", is intended to spread CUPE's message to the public. The campaign will culminate in a "National Day of Action to End Unpaid Work" on 25APR with events in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal.
However, as industry experts tell Open Jaw, flight attendant pay schedules are not as simple as the union's campaign claims. They point out that flight attendants are paid what is called a "blended rate” in order to compensate for the total duty time.
The industry experts told Open Jaw that an average blended rate is $65/hour, climbing to up to $90/hour for the highest tiers of workers. If that "blended rate" were to be eliminated, a new hourly rate from check-in might well be correspondingly reduced.
Bumpy Ride Ahead?
The new CUPE campaign comes ahead of the first negotiations with airlines post-pandemic, in an aviation labour landscape that has shifted - in favour of workers.
South of the border, as Open Jaw has reported, big wins by Delta's pilots and attendants are creating precedent for other negotiations - and some U.S. airlines, still facing critical labour shortages, have already pro-actively announced they'll match Delta's offer for their own employees, which for flight attendants, appears to include being paid for pre-and post-imposed duty periods, although it's not clear if hourly rates were adjusted accordingly.
