Air Canada’s Strike Wasn’t Just About Flights—It Was About Fairness

Toronto, August 2025 – The four-day Air Canada strike that grounded the nation’s largest airline and stranded over 100,000 passengers daily wasn’t simply a story of disruption. It was a lesson in fairness, and a reminder of how undervalued frontline workers have been in the aviation industry for far too long.

The Breaking Point

Flight attendants have long been the face of passenger safety and service, yet much of their labor—particularly the tedious, stressful groundwork of boarding—has gone unpaid. It’s an open secret in the industry that crews aren’t compensated until the plane doors close. Imagine any other profession where half your workday was treated as volunteer hours.

This strike wasn’t about greed. It was about recognition. Flight attendants were asking to be paid for the work they already do. Nothing more, nothing less.

Government Overreach Backfired

The federal government’s attempt to quash the strike with a binding return-to-work order only made matters worse. By framing lawful labor action as a nuisance to be stamped out, Ottawa turned the spotlight directly onto the injustice workers were highlighting. CUPE’s refusal to back down wasn’t just defiance—it was courage in the face of political and corporate pressure.

A Win With Wider Ripples

The new tentative agreement marks a turning point: flight attendants will now earn boarding pay, starting at 50% of their normal hourly rate, climbing to 70% by the end of the contract. That’s not just a win—it’s precedent.

This decision doesn’t just fix an imbalance at Air Canada; it sets the stage for a ripple effect across North America. U.S. airlines are already bracing for similar demands, and rightly so. If Canada’s largest carrier can recognize boarding as paid labor, the excuse for others not to follow suit is evaporating.

Air Canada’s Image Problem

Yes, the airline will recover financially. It always does. But what about its reputation? For days, Air Canada symbolized both corporate inflexibility and government heavy-handedness. Meanwhile, its workers—who ensure passenger safety in the skies—were vilified as the cause of chaos.

Yet in hindsight, it’s clear: the chaos wasn’t caused by workers demanding fair pay. It was caused by an airline and a government that thought they could silence those demands.

The Bigger Picture

This strike should be remembered as more than a temporary inconvenience. It should be seen as a moment when frontline workers forced a legacy carrier to admit a truth it had long ignored: every minute of labor deserves to be valued.

The outcome isn’t just a victory for Air Canada flight attendants. It’s a warning shot to employers across industries that unpaid labor, no matter how “traditional,” is no longer acceptable in 2025.