OTTAWA — The head of the national union representing Air Canada flight attendants said he’s ready to go to jail as he called on members to continue the strike deemed illegal by a federal labour tribunal Monday.
“We will not be returning to the skies,” Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) national president Mark Hancock told reporters Monday afternoon. “If it means folks like me (are) going to jail, so be it.”
Hancock was responding to a Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) decision Monday morning that the ongoing Air Canada flight attendant strike is illegal
and that their union’s direction to keep striking is “unlawful.”
The CIRB decision came one day after it ordered flight attendants back to work shortly after the Mark Carney Liberals invoked a controversial authority to demand the tribunal put an end to the work stoppage.
Shortly after the CIRB decision Sunday ordering an end to the strike that began Saturday morning, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) leadership — which represents Air Canada’s flight attendants — publicly ripped up the order and exhorted members to keep striking.
After new hearings on Sunday regarding the legality of the ongoing strike, the CIRB issued its new decision on Monday giving CUPE leadership until noon eastern Monday to declare the strike over.
“The Board finds that the union’s direction to its members to not resume their work duties is a declaration or authorization of strike activity when the collective agreement is in force which is, therefore, an unlawful strike,”
reads the CIRB decision shared by Air Canada
.
“The union and its officers are ordered to immediately cease all activities that declare or authorize an unlawful strike of its members and to direct the members of the bargaining unit to resume the performance of their duties,” the board added.
In a statement, Air Canada said
it estimated that 500,000 flights have been cancelled in recent days due to the ongoing labour dispute.
Saturday, federal Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu directed the CIRB to order both parties to resume operations and resolve their lingering labour dispute through binding arbitration.
To do so, she invoked powers under section 107 of Canada Labour Code, an increasingly controversial power that the Liberals have used roughly a handful of times over the past decade to order federally-legislated industries back to work without going through back-to-work legislation.
Her decision has sparked the ire of all major federal unions, who said in a joint statement through the Canadian Labour Congress Sunday that they stood behind Air Canada flight attendants’ decision to keep striking.
CLC President Bea Bruske said in a statement that union heads came out of an emergency meeting Sunday evening “with a clear message to push back against the government’s attacks on workers’ rights: an attack on one is an attack on all.”
On Monday morning, Carney said it’s important that flight attendants be compensated fairly but did not address the union revolt against his government’s recent order.
“It is disappointing that those negotiations did not come to an agreement. It was the judgement of both the union and the company that they were at an impasse,” Carney noted as he entered a meeting with Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
“We are in a situation where literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians and visitors to our country are being disrupted by this action. I urge both parties to resolve this as quickly as possible,” he added.
National Post, with files from The Canadian Press.
cnardi@postmedia.com
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