WestJet flight attendants hold a day of action, while union members vote on a possible strike in Calgary on Tuesday.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
More than 4,000 WestJet flight attendants have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike that could delay or ground flights on the August long weekend during peak summer travel season.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 8125, which represents 4,400 WestJet flight attendants, announced the results of their members’ vote this morning: 99.4 per cent voted in favour of a strike.
The union held the vote after months of negotiations with the airline failed to yield any significant movement on a key issue: ground pay for flight attendants. Based on the results of the vote, flight attendants could legally walk off the job as early as Aug. 2. The union will still have to give WestJet 72 hours notice if they do intend to launch a strike.
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WestJet flight attendants are effectively fighting an identical battle their peers at Air Canada fought last summer to get compensated for ground duties.
As it stands, WestJet flight attendants only get compensated when the plane is in the air; they do not get paid for work they do in the airport or on the plane before it departs. They also do not get paid for work done after the plane lands.
In a statement announcing the vote results, Alia Hussain, president of CUPE 8125, said that her members were united and determined, and called on the airline to return to bargaining “with a new focus.”
“They voted to strike because they stand behind the bargaining priorities that they have identified, especially pay for all hours of work performed. WestJet should do the right thing and prevent travel disruptions for their passengers,” she said.
WestJet chief executive officer Alexis von Hoensbroech noted, in a statement, that a strike authorization vote is a common step by unions in labour negotiations, and does not mean a strike will occur. “We are steadfast in our commitment to reach a meaningful agreement with CUPE,” he said.
In a recent interview with The Globe, Ms. Hussain had said that WestJet flight attendants would strike if they don’t get ground pay in a new contract. “We’re looking for a long-term restructuring of the compensation system that will bring us on par with other airlines like Air Canada which won ground pay for their flight attendants last year,” she said.
CUPE has been bargaining with the Calgary-based carrier for a new collective agreement since last October after its previous agreement expired on Dec. 31, 2025. In Wednesday’s statement, the union said that the strike vote became necessary “to move the process forward at the bargaining table.”
Ground pay is the key sticking point. The unpaid work that flight attendants perform caused a stalemate in last year’s negotiations between CUPE and Air Canada flight attendants. That labour dispute made headlines last August when striking Air Canada flight attendants defied a back-to-work order issued by the federal government and continued striking for three days. The disruption grounded domestic and international flights, and ultimately culminated in CUPE brokering a tentative deal with Air Canada which, for the first time, awarded their flight attendants partial ground pay.
Larry Savage, an associate professor of labour studies at Brock University, said that the Air Canada flight attendant strike made unpaid work a defining issue, by “turning what had been a dirty secret of the industry into a widely understood form of wage theft.”
The strong mandate from WestJet flight attendants is effectively a continuation of the Air Canada fight, he said, where another group of predominantly female workers are forcing an airline to recognize and pay them for the work it has treated as invisible.
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A 2023 survey of thousands of flight attendants, conducted by CUPE, found that on average, flight attendants do not get paid for 35 hours of work performed in a given month because of the current compensation system that does not include ground pay, which is typical of most North American airlines.
Ottawa launched an investigation into the airline industry in August, 2025, to look into whether flight attendants were getting paid below the federal minimum wage. The probe found that employers and employees did not disagree that flight attendants needed to be paid for ground work, but they could not agree on the compensation structure. Unions want monetary compensation for that work, while airlines have been paying flight attendants in “credit hours,” which effectively means that they are given more time off in a given week or month in lieu of ground pay.
The government report ultimately proposed that airlines conduct regular audits of themselves to ensure they are compliant with federal minimum wage requirements. This proposal was met with harsh criticism from CUPE, which called the report “underwhelming to tens of thousands of Canadian workers forced to perform unpaid labour every time they report for work.”