Air Canada flight attendants reject wage provide | Labour Rights News | USAEMALL.com

Canada’s biggest air carrier offered a 12 percent wage hike for those with five years on the job or less, and 8 percent for those with more than six.

Air Canada’s flight attendants and its regional unit have voted against ratifying the carrier’s wage offer.

The union announced the decision on Friday.

Many of the flight attendants at Canada’s largest carrier were dissatisfied with wage increases in a tentative agreement that they had arrived at last month and that had helped end a crippling strike at the time.

Air Canada had proposed a 12 percent first-year wage hike for Rouge flight attendants and mainline staff with five years of service or less, and an 8 percent increase for those with six years or more, the union said.

The tension between the Montreal-based carrier and its flight attendants’ union comes only weeks after its roughly 10,500 flight attendants hit the picket line for three days. Disruptions led to cancellations impacting nearly half a million customers flying on Air Canada.

It was the first time any union had defied a long-obscure “industrial peace” clause in Canada’s 40-year-old labour code — one that has been used to end strikes a half dozen times in just the past year and force workers back to their jobs. Several flight attendants had been unhappy both with the content of the offer and the way it was achieved under “duress”, Al Jazeera reported previously.