Ottawa needs more data to probe claims of unpaid work at airlines: minister

Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu says her department needs more information from air carriers and unions to settle recent allegations of unpaid work in the airline sector.

On Thursday, the federal government published the initial findings of a probe it launched six months earlier into allegations made during collective bargaining between Air Canada and the union representing its flight attendants.

More than 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants went on strike in August 2025, disrupting travel plans for thousands of passengers.

Central to that labour dispute were claims from the Air Canada component of the Canadian Union of Public Employees that flight attendants were not being paid for some work, such as ground duties.

Employers in federally regulated industries like the airline sector must compensate employees at or above a bar set by the federal minimum wage.

Hajdu’s department said it did not find evidence that compensation practices in the airline sector fall short of those standards in the first phase of its probe.

But its report did flag that compensation practices for many part-time and entry-level flight attendants warranted “closer examination.”

In an interview with The Canadian Press, Hajdu said federal investigators heard stories from union members about times when they weren’t fully compensated for delayed flights. She said those anecdotes couldn’t be fully verified by pay records.

“That’s not to say it isn’t true. That’s just to say that the records aren’t matching,” Hajdu said.

“We asked both the unions and the employer to provide more detailed, granular data about the pay itself. And we just didn’t get sufficient information to really fully determine, one way or another, the validity of the argument.”

In a media statement, CUPE said that it was disappointed the probe “appears to have concluded that the abuse of unpaid work by multibillion-dollar airlines is not a problem worth fixing.”

While the Air Canada labour dispute triggered the probe, the investigation covered the entire Canadian airline sector.

Hajdu said investigators found one example in a small northern airline “where it looked like people were being underpaid.” She said the unnamed employer is working with her department on fixing that gap.

The report said compensation for flight attendants across most of the airline industry is covered by the “credit-based model.”

Meeting with unions, airlines expected later this month

Rather than an hourly pay rate, the credit model calculates time spent in the air alongside per diems and other benefits that top up a flight attendant’s total compensation.

Hajdu said while it’s fair to look at whether this system is still working as intended, it’s a model most unions and airlines have agreed to over the course of decades of collective bargaining in Canada.

The head of enforcement and compliance at Hajdu’s department is expected to…