Air Canada’s10,000 flight attendants went on strike Saturday morning, bringing the airline’s operations of a halt. By early afternoon the federal government had stepped in, ordering the strikers back to work and imposing binding arbitration. So much for collective bargaining and the right to strike.

The central issue in the dispute is pay for unpaid work. The attendants don’t get paid for the work they do before the plane leaves the gate and after it lands. That can be a lot of hours. The company won’t pay for those hours, they think that isn’t fair, so they went on strike.

Government shouldn’t be taking sides in labor disputes. There is a huge power imbalance when the government intervenes on one side or another.

In this case, yes, hundreds of thousands of air travelers daily were certain to be inconvenienced by the strike. It would negatively impact the company and perhaps the Canadian economy if it were to last any length of time.

However, in ordering the flight attendants back to work basically as the strike began, the government is siding with Air Canada’s management. The attendants must return to not being paid for hours of work each day.

Would you do that?

As a professional I have always understood that there would sometimes be situations where extra work was required. When that happened I did it cheerfully – that is what professionals do.

But when that “extra” work is every day, it is part of the job. For that I would want to be properly compensated. Wouldn’t you?

In the last session of Parliament legislation was introduced by opposition MPs to require the airlines to address the issue and pay flight attendants for the work they do before and after the plane takes off. The Liberals chose not to move it forward on the parliamentary agenda.

‘Now they are taking sides against the workers in not allowing the collective bargaining system to work as it is supposed to. Why have collective bargaining if the government won’t respect the process?

The new Liberal Prime Minister said he was different from his predecessor. It doesn’t seem that way to me.