Air Canada flight attendants overwhelmingly rejected the employer’s pay offer after a vote on a new collective agreement came to an end on Saturday.
Air Canada flight attendants finished voting at 3 p.m. ET on the proposed new contract, voting down the airline’s pay offer by 99.1 per cent.
The airline states the wage component will now be taken to mediation as earlier agreed upon by the two parties.
“Air Canada and CUPE thought this potential outcome through and negotiated between them that in the event that the tentative agreement was not ratified, the wages component would be submitted to mediation and, failing an agreement at that time, to arbitration,” the airline said in a release shortly after the results were announced by the union.
“The parties also agreed mutually that no labour disruption can be initiated, and therefore there will be no lockout or strike and flights will keep operating.”
“Air Canada is fully committed to the mediation and arbitration process,” said the airline.
The Air Canada component of the Canadian Union of Public Employees says that everything except for the issue of wages would still be included in a new collective bargaining agreement with the carrier.
The rejected tentatively last week, which resolved a December strike at the carrier, boosted wages for workers and established a pay regimen for time on the ground when planes are not in flight.
It offered a 12 percent wage increase this year for most of the junior flight attendants and an eight percent increase for more senior members, with incremental increases in subsequent years.
Voting started Aug. 27 among the more than 10,000 union members.
99.4 percent of membership voted, the union announced.
The three-day strike ended on Aug. 19 with the help of a federal mediator after causing travel plans of thousands of customers to be foiled.
“It is impossible to ignore the corrosive role the federal government played in these negotiations,” the union said in a Saturday statement.
“Rather than maintaining their neutrality, the federal government inserted their thumb on the scale during the bargaining process and gave Air Canada the leverage they required to contain flight attendants’ pay.”