WestJet attendants will vote on a tentative agreement that the union says evolves the flight-credit system by recognizing more of the work cabin crew perform on the ground. [1] The airline has not published the text. The strike is over. The unpaid hour is not.
Thursday's ratification hang treated boarding as the hidden shift with a ballot attached. Friday is the same clock. CNBC sold a wage deal. The clock on the ground is still the vote.
CUPE represents 4,400 WestJet attendants. They struck after talks failed, seeking pay from check-in to clock-out instead of mostly for time when the aircraft is in motion. [1] That demand is now continental. Air Canada attendants struck over the same structure last August. U.S. cabin crews have made the same argument in slower motion.
WestJet's last public offer was 13 percent this year, 2.5 percent annually through 2029, and extra pay for all hours worked that the company valued at another 12 percent. [1] Those numbers are an opening bid remembered in print. They are not the ratification packet. Hussain's sentence about evolving the credit system is the only union description on the record.
A reader who only saw "strike ends" will think the work rule died. A reader who only saw the picket will think nothing was won. Boarding is work. A safety brief is work. A delay at the gate is work. The credit-hour system treated those minutes as a gift the attendant gave the timetable. [1] CUPE's sentence about evolving that system is either a rewrite of those minutes or a raise that leaves them unpaid with better branding. Members will know which when they see the packet. The public will not, until someone leaks the grid.
WestJet's 12 percent "all hours" add-on, if it survived into the tentative text, is the closest public hint that ground time is no longer free. If it did not survive, Hussain's evolve line is doing more work than the contract. [1] That is why ratification is the story and the ended strike is the caption.
A raise that leaves boarding unpaid is a raise. A contract that pays boarding is a different industry. [1] Hussain claimed evolution. Evolution is not a grid. The vote is where the grid becomes public, or fails to.
The completed record is still a tentative deal, a credit-hour sentence, 615 cancelled flights, and an uncounted vote. [1] The next edition will owe the reader yes or no. This one owes the reader the unpaid minute that the raise does not automatically buy.
A passenger who sat on the floor at Pearson already paid for those minutes in cancelled hours. The attendant paid for them in a career. Ratification is where those two clocks either meet or stay strangers. Until the packet is public, the raise is a caption and the ground time is the story. [1]
Friday still has no leaked grid. Hussain's evolve sentence is still the only union description on the record. Members will vote what the public cannot yet read. The unpaid minute remains the story until that packet is public.
-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco