Airplanes with standing sections. An extra fee for boarding charged at airport terminals. Even smaller carry-on luggage allowances. These are a few of the features offered by Unfair Canada.
Since December, satirical ads for the fictional airline have popped up on Facebook and Instagram alongside anonymous, first-hand accounts of flight attendants stuck on planes for hours without pay.
The posts are part of the Air Canada flight attendants’ union’s campaign to put a spotlight on the hours of unpaid work expected of flight attendants as their union negotiates a new contract.
The social media campaign signals a new way for unions to win public support during bargaining, said Robin Bondy, a public relations and communications professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
“Now unions have the ability to engage not only their membership but also the public, through their own channels, which is really powerful,” she said. “It gives the union leverage when it comes to negotiations, because they have the ability to share their messages and their stories.”
The Canadian Union of Public Employees, or CUPE, launched the Unfair Canada campaign last fall. In December, the union started to negotiate a new collective agreement for approximately 10,000 Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flight attendants.
Steven Tufts, a labour geographer at York University in Toronto, said the campaign will ramp up pressure on Air Canada and federal labour regulators to address flight attendants’ concerns — especially if negotiations break down and the government intervenes.
“It’s not just to get support for your demands from the employer,” he said. “You’re bargaining with the public so that you can get the public to speak out if the government decides to legislate you back to work.”
He added it’s become the norm for public service companies to seek public support ahead of negotiations.
Enter Unfair Canada. Since last October, CUPE has made dozens of posts on Facebook and Instagram as part of the campaign calling for an end to flight attendants’ unpaid work.
It’s also created an interactive website that asks visitors to write to Air Canada about the issue and a podcast on which flight attendants discuss their working conditions.
CUPE did not disclose how much it spent on the campaign.
“That information is not public,” CUPE communications officer Hugh Pouliot said in an email. “But I can tell you it’s the most significant campaign the Air Canada component or any airline [component] at CUPE has ever initiated, which underlines the importance of this round of bargaining for our members.”
Wesley Lesosky, president of the Air Canada component of CUPE, said the campaign aims to debunk myths about the work of flight attendants.
“People look at flight attendants as this image of having a luxury lifestyle — heading to New York, spending the weekend, getting paid lots — and that’s just not the case.”
The union represents about 10,000 Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flight attendants.
The negotiations mark the first time the flight attendants have collectively bargained in 10 years.
While talks are still in the early stages, CUPE launched the online campaign to build public support as it seeks higher wages and better working conditions for flight attendants.
Some of the posts have gained hundreds of likes on Facebook — a clear sign the campaign is getting engagement, Bondy said.
“This is extremely well organized and professionally put together,” she said.
She said Unfair Canada’s branding paired with podcast clips and anonymous personal stories to build an effective social media campaign that built sympathy for flight attendants.
Bondy added all the content clearly links back to the campaign website and petition, making it easy for viewers to get the union’s message.
“It’s professionally branded. The message is very clear,” she said. “The calls to action are very clear and easy to follow, and the most powerful part of this campaign is the stories that they’re telling.”
Air Canada did not respond to requests for comment.
The union’s collective agreement for Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flight attendants expires at the end of March.
Lesosky expects the negotiations’ biggest sticking point to be wages.
The flight attendants’ wages have risen much slower than the cost of living. The last collective agreement, signed in 2019, gave flight attendants a signing bonus and a two per cent wage increase each year.
The B.C. consumer price index rose about 30 per cent over the past decade.
The union is also looking to address the hours of unpaid work attendants must perform.
Flight attendants are paid based on the time an airplane is in motion. That means they’re not paid during briefings at the gate, safety checks at the terminal or during evacuations.
According to CUPE, each flight attendant spends up to 35 hours per month working for no pay.
“Anyone else, when they go to work, has this expectation of being paid,” Lesosky said. “Why shouldn’t our members have that same expectation, especially when they’re regulated to be there?”
Current wage levels are from $30.02 per hour up to $63.07 per hour after 10 years of experience. But Lesosky said hours of unpaid work lower real wages.
While the campaign is aimed at building support during collective bargaining, Lesosky is also calling for legislation to end flight attendants’ unpaid work.
Two MPs brought forth laws that would address the issue during the last session of Parliament: NDP MP Bonita Zarrillo and Conservative MP Lianne Rood. Both bills died when Parliament was prorogued.
Unfair Canada is part of CUPE’s larger effort to address unpaid work for flight attendants across the sector. The union’s airline division represents approximately 18,500 flight attendants for airlines including WestJet, Sunwing and Flair Airlines.
Tufts said building public support for the flight attendants will put pressure on the airline to meet union demands — especially if negotiations break down.
He added he’s watching to see if flight attendants get wage increases comparable to the one Air Canada pilots won during negotiations last October — approximately 42 per cent over four years.
While pilots are mostly men, flight attendants are mostly women. The wage increase during this round of bargaining will demonstrate the difference in how their work is valued, he said.
“We know how work is valued differently in our economy by gender, and we’ll see if Air Canada is willing to make comparable increases,” he said.
Labour market data from the federal government shows 80 per cent of B.C. flight attendants are women. Meanwhile, the data shows 93 per cent of commercial pilots in B.C. are men.
“There’s a lot of stereotypes about flight attendants being unskilled workers... that’s not true. They have health and safety training. They have to know a whole bunch of safety procedures,” Tufts said.
“We have to see how this public campaign can really get people to value flight attendant work, because it is important.”
