Before Air Canada and its flight attendants reached a tentative agreement on Tuesday to end a days-long strike, the two sides spent the weekend and Monday engaged in some quick maneuvers — and strident communications.

The strike that began Saturday, Aug. 18, was particularly painful for the airline given that it came at the height of the tourist season. The labor action by more than 10,000 flight attendants caused the airline to cancel thousands of trips.

The quick-moving situation required both sides to scurry to communicate their position. In our view, they both rose to the occasion, providing a good case study in crisis communications. Obviously, labor actions get heated and so did the messaging, more so on the union’s side. The airline’s statements were more subdued, which might be expected, though the company’s frustration came through.

On Saturday, Air Canada, which typically carries 130,000 passengers a day, announced it suspended operations and locked out the workers. “Air Canada deeply regrets the effect the strike is having on customers,” it said.

Binding Arbitration

That same day, the government ordered the dispute to go into binding arbitration, but the flight attendants’ union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, immediately asked the Federal Court of Canada to overturn that order. The union put out a press release decrying the government’s backing of the airline.

“We will continue to fight on the picket lines, on the streets, at the bargaining table, in the courts, and in Parliament, until the injustice of unpaid work is done for good,” Mark Hancock, national president of the union, said in the release. (The flight attendants sought, in addition to higher wages, an end to not paying them for “groundwork,” such as boarding and deplaning passengers.)

Then on Monday, the Canada Industrial Relations Board, the federal labor panel, declared the strike to be unlawful and ordered the flight attendants to return to work by midday. The union said it would seek an injunction to suspend that order.

Union leader Hancock said at a press conference on Monday, after the deadline for returning to work had passed, that he’d go to jail rather than have the union obey the order. “If it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it,” he said, according to Reuters. “If it means our union being fined, then so be it. We’re looking for a solution here.”

‘Personally Accountable’

Reuters quoted a message that an Air Canada executive, Andrew Yiu, wrote to the striking flight attendants (the most-pungent message we saw from the airline). “What your union has not explained is that by not returning to work, you are personally accountable for that decision,” he wrote. That message was clear.

Air Canada had planned to resume flights Sunday night, but the union’s defiance pushed that to Monday night. It then had to put out a press release saying the “rolling cancellations” would continue until Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET. The strike also forced it to suspend its guidance for investors.

The two sides reportedly met Monday night for the first time since the strike was called and reached a tentative deal. In a press release Tuesday, Air Canada said it may take seven to 10 days to return to “full, regular service.”

Photo Credit: Air Canada

Sign up for our free weekly newsletter on crisis communications. Each week we highlight a crisis story in the news or a survey or study with an eye toward the type of best practices and strategies you can put to work each day. Click here to subscribe.