Earlier this week, Porter announced it will be opening three new jet bases later this year in Ottawa, Montreal, and Vancouver. This is awesome news! As a flight attendant union, CUPE supports growth and job creation in the sector.

But we also know how important it is for flight attendants to have someone looking out for them while companies pursue rapid expansion on a big scale – so that nobody is left behind in the shuffle.

A union can help protect you and your rights at work while your airline expands and grows.

A union would work to establish a fair process to manage flow, so the procedure for determining who is assigned to which base and which aircraft type is done fairly.

A union will also ensure you have the proper training to work on your new aircraft type, if that is changing as well.

A union can also help flight attendants at Porter protect and expand moving allowances if you’re required to change your base of operations.

Want to make sure you’re looked after as Porter expands? Sign your union card today.

Flight attendants at Lynx Air are just the latest to vote to join CUPE. Approximately 240 Lynx cabin crew based at Calgary and Toronto-Pearson will now have the protection and benefit of union membership. Will cabin crew at Porter be next?

The issues facing cabin crew at Lynx aren’t so different from the ones facing cabin crew at Porter. They want more control over their schedule, better compensation for long duty days, and a contract that addresses concerns over fatigue and compensation.

Now, with Canada’s flight attendant union in their corner, they’ll have the resources and tools to go out and make it a reality.

CUPE now represents flight attendants at 11 different airlines – small, medium, and large. Since 1984, CUPE has been working to make life better for flight attendants in Canada, and they are ready to bring those 40 years of experience and expertise to bear for flight attendants at Porter.

We love our jobs – let’s make them even better with the help of Canada’s flight attendant union.

Sign your card to join CUPE today!

One of the biggest differences when you have a union is that when your bosses break the rules, you have a union in your corner to help make things right.

When you form a union your work rules and working conditions are codified into a contract,  more commonly known as a collective agreement. This agreement is negotiated between your union – specifically, the employees elected to the bargaining committee – and your employer. Collective agreements are legally binding, meaning both employees and employer have to respect and follow the collective agreement. If your employer breaches the collective agreement your union can file a complaint, known as a grievance.

The process for filing a grievance is slightly different in every collective agreement, but most tend to follow similar steps that increasingly escalate. In the early stages of a grievance, the individual or union local has a discussion with the employer. This process continues through different stages in the hopes of resolving the issue.

If it is still not resolved, a local may decide to refer a grievance to arbitration. Arbitration is sort of like a labour court, where an independent arbitrator will issue a final decision on the grievance. Knowing that a matter can be referred to arbitration is often incentive for an employer to try to resolve the issue sooner – and often, it’s an incentive not to breach the collective agreement in the first place!

That’s a world of difference from where we are with Porter today. Right now, if Porter doesn’t follow the FOAG, there are no consequences, and as employees, we have no means to hold them accountable. But with a union, we will have a process in place if Porter does not respect and follow the rules.

Have questions about grievances, or anything else to do with forming a union? Contact us at porter@cupe.ca.

And if you’re ready to sign your card and expand your rights at work, sign your union card today.

To have a strong union that is equipped to go to bat for better pay and working conditions, union members make contributions to their union known as “dues”.

As a CUPE member, you’ll have a say in how your union local spends your dues so you can be sure you’re getting good value for your dues money. Each CUPE local sets its own dues structure, depending on its own needs and priorities. Typically, average dues are 1.5% of regular wages, with 0.85% going to National dues. The remaining percentage for local dues is voted on by the membership – in other words, you!

What are you getting in exchange for union dues? In short, a lot.

Your dues help pay for staff provided by CUPE – like lawyers, researchers, and pay equity, health and safety, and communications specialists – who will help you negotiate a strong contract and make gains at the bargaining table.

Your dues also cover the costs of the daily operations of your union local, like office expenses, newsletters, trainings and events.

A portion of your dues also goes to a special fund to ensure you have the resources to defend your jobs and your wages in the event of job action.

Altogether, for pennies on the dollar, your dues help ensure there’s a strong union looking out for you, your livelihood, and your safety while you’re on the job.

Importantly, your union dues are also tax deductible.

With CUPE, you get your money’s worth – and then some!

Sign your union card to join CUPE today!

As we’ve seen time and time again,  Porter can make changes to our working conditions whenever they want – to make them better, or worse.

This month, Porter is implementing its new 24-hour reserve policy, which is making it very difficult for many of you to manage your work-life balance and hold a second job. Porter has also decided to arbitrarily issue reserve conversion with little explanation for the change.

In recent months, Porter has shown they can give cabin crew the job improvements they deserve when they want to – and they can also take our rights away whenever they feel like it.

Without a union (and an enforceable collective agreement), anything Porter gives out today, they can take away tomorrow. That’s just the sad reality.

Employers always float wage increases and new perks when they’re under pressure from union drives, only to claw them back later.

The company has been hoping their promise of a wage bump for some employees on the former B-scale would distract from the unfair changes they’ve made to the reserve policy and increasing the length of your duty day without a comparable duty premium. WestJet flight attendants, for example, who are represented by CUPE, receive a $200 duty premium for minutes 1-60 beyond a maximum duty period and $400 for minutes 61-120 after that.

Porter talks a lot about how these new changes finally bring the company in line with industry standards. But we don’t want to simply carry on chasing industry standards – we want to set our own, and with a union, we can.

Without a union, Porter can give, but they also can (and will) take away.

With a union, Porter won’t be able to make changes to our contract or take away our hard-fought wins arbitrarily. With a union, we’ll have a strong, united voice, and an enforceable contract to protect and advance our working conditions.

Let’s show the company we’re determined to have a voice. If you haven’t already, sign your card today. Signing a union card is a two-step process: after you’ve signed up, you will also need to pay a federally-mandated $5 application which is required by the Canada Industrial Relations Board. You can now pay your fee via e-transfer to porter@cupe.ca – easy-peasy!

Ensuring the health and safety for passengers is such a central part of a flight attendant’s job. But who looks out for our health and safety at work?

The reality is that employer non-compliance with basic occupational health and safety obligations is pretty common through the airline sector – unless there’s a union pushing back to ensure employees’ health and safety is being protected.

CUPE has represented flight attendants in Canada since 1984. As Canada’s flight attendant union, CUPE has been a leading voice for the health and safety of airline workers for nearly four decades, on issues ranging from pandemic PPE to cosmic radiation monitoring, to cabin air quality, layover safety, and passenger-to-flight attendant ratios.

CUPE has a dedicated senior health and safety officer for the airline sector, who works with flight attendants across Canada to provide guidance to employers and inspectors, advocate for union members, and deliver top-of-the-line health and safety training. CUPE’s National Healthy and Safety Committee provides networking and information-sharing opportunities for workers across the country.

Consider your own experience:

• Have you been taught about your four health and safety rights at work?
• Does your employer respond quickly when you file a health and safety complaint?
• Do you have a health and safety committee at each base?
• Does your health and safety committee participate in investigations?
• Does your health and safety committee inspect your workplace, including the planes you fly on?

If you answered “no” or “I don’t know” to any of these questions, then your workplace suffers from a weak health and safety culture.

But a union can help change that culture, and ensure we make it home safe at the end of the day, and healthy at the end of our careers.

Sign your union card today to take the next step towards a safer, healthier workplace for Porter cabin crew!

As you already know, Porter has substantially reduced how and when cabin crew can trade pairings. Reserve holders and block holders can no longer trade with one another – only within their respective groups.

This means a much smaller pool to trade pairings, much less flexibility for you to alter your schedule, and a lot less freedom for all Porter cabin crew to control daily life.

The new changes limit cabin crew to three trades, swaps, or drops per bid period. If you get a bad schedule or have something come up in your life and you need to make more than three changes to your schedule? Tough luck!

These changes, combined with the other changes coming to reserve in January, will make things a lot harder for everyone – but especially those of us with another job (or jobs).

These changes don’t just affect our work life – they impact our personal life, our home life, and our work-life balance as a whole.

It’s just another example of how, without a union and a collective agreement, Porter can and will make changes that have significant negative impacts on all of us – and we get no say whatsoever.

But with a union and an enforceable contract, Porter won’t be able to make these kinds of major changes to our working conditions unilaterally. They will have to work with us.

If you’re like us and you’ve had enough, and you want a real voice and a real say at your job, sign your union card today.

And if you’ve already signed your union card, why not share this message with a few colleagues?

It’s tough for flight attendants to access affordable, healthy food away from home – especially when we’re often transiting through airports and airport hotels. It’s especially tough when inflation is rampant and Porter is only giving us $3.60/hour while we’re away from base.

We end up paying more for meals because of airport prices – even Tim Horton’s prices are jacked up at the airport. Food restrictions at international borders make it even harder to pack meals for the workday and avoid buying food in inflated US dollars.

As flight attendants, we deserve better than struggling to feed ourselves on the job.

Porter flight attendants deserve “best-in-class” working conditions, and that includes meal per diems that keep up with inflation and allow us to stay fed and healthy away from home.

With a union, we can make it happen.

Air Transat flight attendants represented by CUPE negotiated for $4.73/hour in Canada and up to $6.76/hour outside of Canada for meals (see here, page 75).

Air Canada flight attendants represented by CUPE negotiated their per diems by meal (see here, page 33), and in 2024 they’ll be receiving $17.95 for breakfast, $20.33 for lunch, $40.27 for dinner, and $10.53 for snacks. That’s up to $89 per day to cover meals – and when they’re working in the United States, those figures are paid in US dollars.

Compare that with the $3.70/hour that Porter will pay us in 2024 and it’s abundantly clear that our working conditions need to improve.

Inflation is taking its toll on our wallets but with a union, we can stand together and ensure everyone is keeping their head above-water.

Sign your union card to join CUPE today!

Last week, in a memo to cabin crew, Porter CEO Michael Deluce backtracked on his recent statement calling the FOAG “a privilege, not a right”.

Regardless of the words Mr. Deluce chooses to describe the situation, under the current arrangement at Porter, cabin crew don’t have rights – just “privileges”.

Another privilege Mr. Deluce alluded to in his recent memo to cabin crew is “regular benchmarking to ensure we continue to offer best-in-class working conditions to all our flight crew.”

“Benchmarking” is corporate jargon for picking and choosing some elements from contracts at unionized airlines based on what suits the company, and then calling it proof that Porter offers “best-in-class” working conditions.

In reality, “benchmarking” is done entirely at the company’s discretion and choosing. Far from being “best-in-class”, it’s more like doing the bare minimum.

By comparison, CUPE has a dedicated researcher for the airline sector who helps flight attendants identify and achieve the best contract language and workplace protections in the industry. And because that researcher works for union members – not the company – you can actually trust the information they give you about what’s actually “best-in-class”.

It’s clear: with a collective agreement, we can expect regular pay increases on predictable timelines. With a union, we’ll have the resources and the backing (like research, legal, and health and safety expertise) to ensure we get the contract that fits our needs and lifts up our working conditions across the board. And with a union, nothing will stop management from offering us a raise or an improvement in our working conditions, as long as we agree to it.

If you agree that rights aren’t rights when someone can just take them away, sign your card today.

Porter CEO Michael Deluce recently said during a virtual townhall that “the FOAG is a privilege, not a right.” These comments have seen a lot of Porter cabin crew asking us what the difference is between the current Flight Operations Administration Guide (FOAG) and an enforceable union contract.

Let’s just say there are many differences.

For starters, the provisions under the FOAG are voluntary for Porter – as Mr. Deluce has made pretty clear. The word “guide” is right there in the name! But with a union contract, our rights will be laid out in black and white, and the company must respect them or face consequences.

Next, the FOAG committee is made up of 13 people, but eight of them are from the management side, and only five from the employee side. The deck is already stacked against cabin crew under FOAG, but with a union, we meet our employer on a level playing field – no one can unilaterally overrule the other.

With the FOAG, Porter can make changes at any time, regardless of our feedback and our concerns that we relayed through the committee. But with a real contract, Porter won’t be able to make changes to our working conditions without our agreement.

With the FOAG, there’s a process in place to hear employee feedback – but no accountability from the company to ensure that feedback is acted upon. With a union, the company will have to meet us on an equal footing and treat our concerns seriously.

The FOAG says our industry is “dynamic in nature”, but that is exactly why cabin crew need and deserve clear rules to protect them.

The FOAG says the company’s goal is “to have the safest operation possible, and be ‘best in class’”, and we support that goal, but unfortunately, we’re not sure the company supports us. Our work conditions are not “best in class” – far from it.

Cabin crew at other airlines in Canada have best-in-class working conditions because they joined a union and achieved them through collective bargaining. We can do it too.

If you think you deserve best-in-class working conditions – and if you think the company should respect your rights at work, rather than following the rules only when they feel like it – then it’s time to sign your union card today. Contact an organizer today to sign your card.