Air Canada flight attendants reject wage deal dispute heads mediation

More than 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants overwhelmingly rejected a tentative wage agreement on Saturday, the union said, prolonging a dispute that erupted into a short but disruptive walkout last month and sending the remaining unresolved wage issues to mediation while flights continue to operate. The Canadian Union of Public Employees Air Canada component said 99.1 percent of members voted against ratifying the wage portion of the deal reached on August 19 after thousands of attendants struck, briefly grounding many operations at the carrier.

The tentative four year contract that ended the initial stoppage included wage increases, pension and benefit improvements and a new formula to pay attendants for time spent on the ground during boarding and deplaning. Under the proposed terms, attendants would receive 60 minutes of preflight pay for narrowbody aircraft and 70 minutes for widebody jets, with ground pay starting at 50 percent of the hourly rate in year one and rising to 70 percent by year four. Reported estimates of the overall compensation package varied, with some calculations placing total increases, including benefits, near 40 percent over the contract term while...