Canada moves to halt strike as hundreds of flights grounded
Canada's largest airline, which flies directly to 180 cities worldwide, had stopped all operations after about
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RNZ News
11 hours ago
- RNZ News
Striking Air Canada flight attendants defy back-to-work order
By Allison Lampert, Rishabh Jaiswal and Promit Mukherjee, Reuters Flight attendants protest in front of the Air Canada headquarters near Pierre-Elliott Trudeau Airport in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Photo: AFP / Andrej Ivanov Air Canada's striking flight attendants have refused a government-backed labour board's order to return to work, forcing the airline to delay restarting its operations and leaving its passengers in limbo. The Canadian Union of Public Employee said the 10,000 Air Canada attendants it represents would remain on strike, calling the order unconstitutional and "designed to protect the airline's profit." Instead, it invited Air Canada - the country's largest airline - back to the table to "negotiate a fair deal." In response, the airline said it would delay plans to restart operations from Sunday until Monday evening (local time). The refusal by the union to obey the order left many travellers at Toronto Pearson International Airport confused and frustrated on Sunday afternoon. Many of them were camped out in airport lounges, uncertain whether when and if flights would resume or whether Air Canada would make tentative arrangements. "We are kind of left to figure it out for ourselves and fend for ourselves with no recourse or options provided by Air Canada at this time," said Elizabeth Fourney of Vancouver. Francesca Tondini, a 50-year-old from Italy, said she was about to return home after visiting Canada when her flight was cancelled on Saturday and again on Sunday. When she asked Air Canada when the flight would finally depart, the airline responded, "maybe tomorrow, maybe Tuesday, maybe Friday, maybe Saturday - they don't know!," she said. The flight attendants began their strike early on Saturday morning, after negotiations that had dragged on for months reached an impasse. In anticipation, the airline cancelled most of its 700 daily flights, forcing more than 100,000 travellers to scramble for alternatives. Within hours of the strike declaration, the Canada Industrial Relations Board complied with a request by Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu and ordered binding arbitration. The Canada Labour Code gives the government the power to ask the CIRB to impose such an order in the interest of protecting the economy. Air Canada had encouraged the government to act, while CUPE had pushed for a negotiated solution, saying binding arbitration would take pressure off the airline. "The federal government has entrusted a board to administer these rules in the Canadian Labour Code, and if you defy them, you are transgressing and essentially violating the law," said Rafael Gomez, a professor of employment relations at the University of Toronto. It is exceedingly rare for a union to defy a back-to-work order. In 1978, Canadian postal workers refused to comply with back-to-work legislation, resulting in fines and the jailing of their union leader for contempt of Parliament. The government's best option is to go to court to enforce the order and secure a contempt order if the union refused to back down, said Michael Lynk, professor emeritus at Western University's Faculty of Law in London, Ontario. "The union leadership could face the same consequences as what happened 45 years ago. It could be fines against the union ... potential of jail time for the union leaders," he said. The minority Liberal government could also try to pass back-to-work legislation, but that would require support of political rivals and approval in both houses of parliament, which is on break until 15 September. "Like many Canadians, the minister is monitoring this situation closely," Jennifer Kozelj, Hajdu's press secretary, said in a statement. "The Canada Industrial Relations Board (the Board) is an independent tribunal. Please refer to them regarding your question," she added in response to questions about the union's defiance of the order and about the refusal of the board's leader, a former Air Canada counsel, to recuse herself from the decision. The CIRB did not respond to a request for comment. The government, under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, intervened last year to head off rail and dock strikes that threatened to cripple the economy. Lynk said the CUPE was also likely to file a legal challenge to the order. The government's use of its extraordinary power to force binding arbitration through CIRB, called Section 107, is relatively new. Unions have criticized the provision, saying such interference favours employers and denies their right to collective bargaining. The most contentious issue has been the union's demand for compensation for time spent on the ground between flights and when helping passengers board. Attendants are largely paid only when their plane is moving. -Reuters
The Spinoff
12 hours ago
- The Spinoff
Inside the ‘good buzz' of Christchurch's hospitality scene
The people behind three new Christchurch eateries tell Alex Casey why the city's hospitality scene is bucking the doom and gloom trends. Piripi Baker is under the pump trying to staff Papa's Smashies thanks to winter bugs taking out his usual workers. Under the crisp blue Christchurch sky, he hangs up the phone after chatting to a potential fill-in during our interview. 'That was just Max from Fifth Street. He's pretty much a Michelin star chef and people pay him tonnes of money to make food for them because he's so brilliant, but he's also just offered to come and make fries for me if I'm short-staffed,' he says. 'Turns out Christchurch has some of the most helpful people in the universe.' Given that Papa's Smashies frequently sells out within just an hour or two, Baker needs all the help he can get. His smashed burger joint, now run out of a converted warehouse on the city fringe, joins an ever-growing list of new places to eat in Christchurch, a place billed as being the most vibrant place for hospitality in the country.'Even three or so years ago, you knew all the spots that you wanted to go that people were talking about,' says Baker. 'You could count them on two hands, and it now feels like we're actually starting to lose track. There's plenty of new offerings, and plenty of people giving stuff a go.' Baker himself started Papa's out of his driveway in North Beach, New Brighton, just last year. 'We sold them literally out of my house without any permission or anything like that. But we didn't get in trouble with the council, or our neighbours, so that was nice.' In fact, the opposite happened. 'The community was really supportive, people kept sharing it and it started to grow a bit,' he says. He sold 140 burgers at his last pop-up, farewelling the driveway and moving into a shipping container in the converted warehouse Sydenham Underpass earlier this year. 'In some ways it felt way too soon, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised I couldn't actually afford anything else,' he says. Papa's opened as soon as Baker got an extractor fan installed – he didn't even have the plumbing sorted yet, but his mate Jayden at Empire Chicken let him do all his prep and dishes in his kitchen. 'Honestly, none of this would have ever happened without all those connections from the community,' says Baker. 'I would be struggling way more if people here didn't have such an amazing, friendly, supportive attitude.' It was that same drive to foster a supportive hospitality scene that led Madie Macauley and Iain Collis to quit working for a 'toxic' hospitality company in Christchurch and start their own Canadian-inspired doughnut business, Grumpy's, also last year. 'I think there are a lot of us mid-30s millennials who grew up breaking our backs in old school hospitality and know something needs to change,' says Macauley. 'What we are seeing now is people wanting to collaborate and create community in hospitality in Christchurch, rather than competition.' We are chatting as they prepare to open their first shop, just opposite Papa's in that same Sydenham warehouse, and the sense of collaboration is evident even in the smallest of gestures. They run doughnut samples over to Piripi and his wife to try, in exchange for a wad of napkins for a certain unnamed greasy journalist. 'It pays to be kind here,' says Collis. 'Christchurch is a little bit too small to be a dickhead.' He was here for the quakes, and says the enormous shift in how people treated each other during that time has become permanent. 'Instantly everyone was like, 'oh, hey, these are actually people around me, maybe let's try to look after each other'. I think that is still very much a part of the city today.' Across town at Peaches in Linwood, owner Tessa Peach agrees. 'It does feel like a really supportive city, and I think it does come down to us still being in this post-quake environment. We've gone through this massive trauma of losing everything, so it feels like there is this real desire from everyone to make it work.' Even the enthusiasm for pop-ups and driveway burgers can be traced to the transitional nature of post-quake life. 'We've had to be open to all sorts of new ways of getting together, and we got really used to meeting in garages,' laughs Peach. Also the owner of Frances Nation, Peach opened her new site in Linwood just two months ago in an old office space. 'I live around here, and I just got quite taken by the idea that it would be great to start a neighbourhood cafe,' she says. While she had a lot of support, she did also encounter some surprising snobbery about the location. 'There's all these old, really outdated ideas about parts of Christchurch, but we're not in the 90s any more – we're actually in the most drastically changing city in New Zealand. It's a good buzz, and there's a tonne of opportunity.' The drift of hospitality businesses to more city-fringe and industrial areas in Christchurch also means cheaper rent. 'You literally step outside of the Four Aves and the price is so different that it's actually insane,' says Collis in Sydenham. Barker agrees. 'I definitely pay a lot less because I'm a shipping container in a warehouse,' he laughs. 'Whereas the overheads on the CBD seem to be a big issue for everyone. Even when they're doing really well, it's really expensive to rent in Riverside or Little High, or anywhere else in the middle of town.' And with Christchurch being still a relatively small and cycle-friendly place, everyone agrees that operating a hospitality business outside the CBD doesn't mean you are far away from anything. Peaches may be in – gasp – Linwood, but it is also on the Puari ki Rapanui cycleway, which means you can always find one or two bikes parked up outside. As for everywhere else? 'You can get pretty much anywhere you need to be within 20 or 25 minutes,' says Baker. 'So that also means it is never hard to get to someone else's spot and help them out if they need it.' Indeed, later that night, Baker's callout for help would again prove his thesis about Christchurch's 'weirdly, weirdly, weirdly friendly' hospitality community. With Papa's regular staff still knocked out with sickness, Collis from Grumpy's abandoned his last-minute shop finishings across the warehouse to prep all the onions and pickles for the burgers, and Mark Sanders from Lo-Fi Burgers jumped behind the grill despite, on paper, being Papa's direct competitor. They sold out within a couple of hours. 'Chch whānau,' Baker posted later on his Instagram story, 'so thankful.'
Scoop
12 hours ago
- Scoop
Communities Call For Shut Down Of Methanex
Press Release – Climate Justice Taranaki The action follows a three day Together for Te Taiao wnanga at Owae marae with community and indigenous experts from across Aotearoa, Aboriginal and Pasifika nations, who have been struggling for indigenous rights and environmental justice for generations. Climate Justice Taranaki (CJT) and other activists from across the country protested at the Canadian owned Methanex gas-fed plant in Taranaki today. 'The action was to highlight why communities across Aotearoa face rising energy prices yet the New Zealand government gives hundreds of millions of dollars in tax payer subsidies to the Canadian gas company and pursues, rather than transitions the country off fossil fuels,' said CJT spokesperson Tuhi-Ao Bailey. The action follows a three day Together for Te Taiao wānanga at Owae marae with community and indigenous experts from across Aotearoa, Aboriginal and Pasifika nations, who have been struggling for indigenous rights and environmental justice for generations. 'As keynote speaker Tina Ngata explained, the extraction of resources from indigenous peoples' territories has been in progress since the Doctrine of Discovery papal bulls in 1493 encouraged European monarchies to send out their people and new corporations to steal resources and slaughter other nations under the ideology of white supremacy. This ideology based theft has never stopped and now leaves the world with the largest environmental and economic catastrophe humankind has ever faced,' said Bailey. 'This company has absolutely no morals. While working families and vulnerable communities are suffering increasing energy prices, Methanex has received $300 million worth of free carbon credit subsidies in the last 10 years to stop the company leaving Aotearoa. They have also claimed they can't afford to pay tax for the last 2 years but managed to pay out $70 million to their overseas shareholders, while taking the gas they buy at cheap rates from NZ wells, and selling it off at five times the rate to NZ residential users. It's criminal.' 'On top of that, the New Zealand government recently removed the 2018 ban on new oil and gas extraction offshore and announced a $200 million fund for oil and gas companies like OMV and Todd, to increase fossil gas exploration. This has been widely condemned by other countries and seen us removed from the international Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA), putting our international trade at risk.' 'The company consumes around 40% of New Zealand's dwindling gas supply to make methanol, of which 95% is exported overseas to create fuels, plastics and other chemicals. Ironically on the company website they proudly claim the chemicals are sustainable – if made from renewable resources – which they are not.' 'The local hapu and wider community have objected to the methanol plant since it was installed under the National government in 1981 and again when the offshore Pohokura gas well and pipeline was added in 2006 to feed the plant. The company nowadays gives back a tiny fraction of what they already receive in tax cuts as branded sponsorships which silence much of the community's objection to the gigantic ugly factory and the health impacts of its localised pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.' 'Communities in Aotearoa shouldn't be subsidising a Canadian corporation while struggling to heat their homes,' said Bailey. 'Our taxes should be funding initiatives to urgently transition us off fossil fuels such as free public transport, community-owned solar cooperatives, onshore wind farms, and geothermal projects that keep energy affordable and profits local. We want Methanex shut down now and an end to gas extraction.'
