Flight attendants are abused: Port Moody-Coquitlam MP

“Despite working 14 hours a day or more, many flight attendants are sometimes only paid for half of their working time,” Port Moody-Coquitlam MP Bonita Zarrillo wrote in an op-ed.

Travel season is quickly approaching and with it millions of Canadians will flock to airports across the country to see loved ones and spend time together during the holidays.

All the while, flight attendants will be present to ensure your journey is safe and smooth.

But did you know that the flight attendants you rely on work without getting paid?

Flight attendants in Canada – 80 percent of whom are women – work an average of 35 hours per month without pay.

In the airline industry, most flight attendants are only paid when the wheels push back and stop being paid once the flight arrives at the gate.

This means they are not compensated for the essential duties of boarding, assisting passengers of all ages, conducting security checks and managing disembarkation.

In any other industry, it would be unthinkable that an employer would not pay employees for work performed on-site and in uniform.

But in the Canadian aviation sector, it’s business as usual.

This reality is a combination of outdated wage structures, long-standing industry practices, and gaps in federal labor law. The current industry standards were established decades ago, but flying has changed a lot since then. Flight attendant wages have been flat for decades, and increasingly busy airports and extreme weather conditions mean even more unpaid hours, as flight attendants are not paid even during many delays.

Despite working 14 hours a day or more, many flight attendants are sometimes only paid for half of their working time. All this is happening amid a cost-of-living crisis, with more and more flight attendants living out of their cars.

The situation is so dire that some flight attendant unions have been forced to open food banks in their offices for their members.

Of course, this current model works fine for Canada’s billion-dollar airlines. Air Canada, for example, exceeded its internal profit targets, reporting $1.5 billion in profits in its latest quarterly earnings report alone, while Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau took home more than $12 million in 2023.

There is no denying that gender has played a role in this exploitation of Canadian flight attendants.

Even as the workforce becomes more diverse, longstanding gender bias has normalized the unfair and exploitative compensation model. Like other female-dominated professions, such as nursing and childcare, their work is undervalued and underpaid.

It is time for this bias to be corrected and for Ottawa to close the loopholes in Canada’s labor law that have allowed airlines to exploit flight attendants for decades.

Thanks to an NDP bill recently introduced in Parliament, that moment could come soon.

Bill C-415, the Flight Attendant Remuneration Act, will enshrine into law the end of unpaid work in the aviation sector by requiring airlines to pay their employees full wages for every hour they work.

Yes, it is inconceivable that such a law would even be needed in Canada in 2024. But this shadowy industrial practice has thrived in obscurity among liberals and conservatives for decades. It’s time for that to end.

Whether you’re a nurse, electrician or barista, if you show up to work in uniform and start your duties, you get paid. Why should flight attendants – the people responsible for the safety of the public at 30,000 feet – be any different?

Flight attendants have been sounding the alarm for over a year with their Unpaid Work Won’t Fly campaign. They deserve our support, including support from the federal government.

Let’s make this travel season the season of fairness and ensure that those who work so hard to get us safely to our destinations finally get the respect and reward they deserve.

– Port Moody-Coquitlam MP Bonita Zarrillo and Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Aviation Section President Wesley Lesosky