A brand new survey of Canadian flight attendants from CUPE’s Airline Division reveals that flight attendants in Canada are performing unpaid work for 34.86 hours monthly, on common.
The survey, which ran between December 10, 2022 and January 11, 2023, and acquired 9,807 responses, reveals intimately simply how rampant the difficulty of unpaid work has grow to be within the airline sector, and the profound influence it’s having on airline employees.
“Unpaid work is a unclean secret on this trade, and one we’re decided to stamp out,” stated Wesley Lesosky, President of CUPE’s Airline Division. “The underside line is, if we’re on the jobsite, in our uniforms, performing work duties then we needs to be getting paid – full cease.”
Examples of labor that largely goes unpaid, in accordance with the survey, embrace boarding, floor preparation, pre-boarding preparation, galley preparation, and different pre-flight duties. Put collectively, a flight attendant in Canada places in practically a full week of full-time work that goes unpaid over the course of a typical block, which is normally one month.
Over half of the practically 10,000 respondents additionally indicated that they’re compensated under their full hourly fee of pay for obligatory coaching.
“Because it stands, when a flight attendant will get educated on how one can handle a security situation or a mid-air medical situation, or after they help a passenger in a wheelchair to their seat, they aren’t getting paid what they need to be,” Lesosky continued. “I’m unsure how anybody justifies that.”
CUPE’s Airline Division represents roughly 18,500 flight attendants working at ten airways throughout Canada.
