A strike by 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants has been deemed illegal, and workers ordered back on the job.
The ruling from the Canada Industrial Relations Board comes after the flight attendants defied an earlier return-to-work order that also told them to submit to arbitration.
Air Canada is the country’s largest airline and the strike, coming during the peak summer travel season, is affecting about 130,000 travelers per day.
It entered its third day Monday after the airline suspended previous plans to restart operations Sunday.
The two groups remain opposed on pay and other workplace issues.
The Canada Industrial Relations Board declared a strike by 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants illegal Monday and ordered them back on the job after they ignored an earlier order to return to work and submit to arbitration.
“The members of the union’s bargaining unit are directed to resume the performance of their duties immediately and to refrain from engaging in unlawful strike activities,” the Canada Industrial Relations Board board, or CIRB, said in a written decision.
The board, an independent administrative tribunal that interprets and applies Canada’s labor laws, said the union needs to provide written notice to all of its members by noon Monday that they must resume their duties.
It is not immediately clear what recourse the board or the government has if the union continues to refuse.
The panel previously ordered airline staff back to work by 2 p.m. Sunday after the government intervened and Air Canada said it planned to resume flights Sunday evening. But when the workers refused, the airline said it would resume flights Monday evening instead.
Air Canada said in a statement that the union “illegally directed its flight attendant members to defy a direction from the Canadian Industrial Relations Board.”
Canadian Union of Public Employees national President Mark Hancock on Sunday had ripped up a copy of the initial back-to-work order outside Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, and said members would not go…
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