This week, flight attendants working for Air Canada are defying the Liberal governments’ attempt to force them back to work. One of the key issues in this strike is unpaid labour. Flight attendants at Air Canada work, on average, 35 hours of unpaid labour per month.
Put another way, Air Canada steals 35 hours per month from these workers. When employers require workers to work unpaid time it is sometimes called wage theft. And we can expect that if Air Canada is allowed to continue getting away from stealing from its employees, it will embolden other employers to commit wage theft.
Unpaid labour is wage theft
The basic concept of an employment contract is that a person agrees to “sell” their time (labour) for a certain wage. People have jobs because they need money to pay for housing, food, clothing, and other things. People do not expect to work for free.
And yet, employers continue to find ways to avoid paying workers for their time.
Most workers can think of examples of unpaid time in their workplace. From teachers who do not get enough prep or marking time to actually complete their work to retail workers who are required to show up 15 minutes before their shift for bag checks to home care workers who are not paid between clients, unpaid work is widespread. It might be unpaid overtime or holiday pay, being expected to answer emails outside of work time, being on-call without compensation, unpaid travel time, workplace policies about security or other pre-shift procedures, unpaid time being transported to a job site or being denied a lunch break because things are busy.
When workers are forced to be on company time but not paid, that is wage theft. The boss is taking workers time for free and stealing the wage they should be paid.
Right now, flight attendants are only paid for the time they are on the airplane, despite being required to be at work for many hours before and between flights.
This is an egregious example of wage theft.
By taking their fight against unpaid labour to the picket line in defiance of government attempts to shut them down, flight attendants are fighting wage theft for all workers. And the Liberal government’s quick attempt to silence these workers is a clear indication that the Carney government is on the side of the employers looking to squeeze every last dollar from the workers who actually get things done.
Women’s labour undervalued
It is not surprising that flight attendants are on the front line of the fight against wage theft. Seventy percent of flight attendants are women. Women are particularly disadvantaged by unpaid work at work because women also continue to do the lion’s share of unpaid domestic labour.
Women’s unpaid labour at home often means they earn less money than their male co-workers, have smaller pensions, and have more difficulty accessing support programs like Employment Insurance. This means that it is especially important for women that they are paid for the time they are at work.
Flight attendants have a long history of fighting sexism in the workplace. In the 1970s and 1980s, unionized flight attendants fought against policies that required flight attendants to be a certain weight and wear sexually provocative uniforms, and even prevented them from wearing eyeglasses at work. As recently as 2018, Air Canada flight attendants have sounded the alarm on widespread sexual harassment at work.
Like the struggles against sexist policies and sexual harassment, the current fight against low wages and unpaid work continues flight attendants’ legacy of fighting sexism and gender discrimination.
Only workers can end wage theft
Governments are unwilling to address wage theft. In 2024, it was reported that the government of Ontario failed to collect $60 million owed to workers. And this is only from instances where workers filed complaints about wage theft and employers were ordered to pay. In some provinces, employers even have free reign to steal tips from their workers. Workers, particularly those without a union, simply cannot rely on the ability to collect money they are owed by their employers.
For unionized workers, collective bargaining and workplace action can help fight unpaid labour and wage theft. That is why Air Canada’s flight attendants are on the picket line. They are drawing a line in the sand: either we get paid for our time or we don’t work.
While the Liberal government is all-too-willing to support employers by forcing workers back to work, the flight attendants at Air Canada are demonstrating that workers do not need to let the government have the final say. And if we want to win the fight against wage theft across all industries, we need to be there with the flight attendants to say we won’t work for free.
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