More than 4,000 flight attendants at WestJet, Canada's second-largest airline, are heading back to work after their union reached a tentative agreement with the Calgary-based carrier, ending a historic strike rooted in a dispute the cabin crew summed up as ‘working for free.’
Mainline flight attendants walked off the job at midnight on August 2 after last-ditch talks failed to avert a stoppage. Behind the scenes, negotiators for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) continued bargaining with WestJet management even after the walkout began.
At the heart of the dispute was the fundamental model of how WestJet pays its cabin crew. Until now, the airline has only paid flight attendants for the hours they actually spend in the air — measured from the moment the aircraft pushes back from the gate to the moment it arrives. Time spent boarding passengers and waiting through ground delays went unpaid, a status quo that CUPE argued had to change.
WestJet did eventually put a ground-pay element on the table, but the union believed the offer fell short of what its members needed, and the strike went ahead. The Canadian government declined to intervene, opting not to impose restrictions on the strike or force the flight attendants into binding arbitration, and instead urged both sides to reach a deal at the bargaining table.
That deal arrived on Monday in the form of a tentative agreement. The specific terms have not yet been released. What is known is that WestJet had previously offered a 13% wage increase in October 2026, followed by further 2.5% wage increases in each of 2027, 2028 and 2029, along with other improvements to its offer.
The resolution allows WestJet to begin restoring an operation that had been thrown into disruption by the walkout, while the tentative agreement still needs to be finalised and ratified by members. For Canada's cabin crews, the fight over unpaid ground time has become one of the most closely watched labour stories in the country's aviation sector.
Sources: Paddle Your Own Kanoo, AeroTime. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By Daniel Okafor.
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