After a weeks-long social media campaign by WestJet Flight attendants, the company’s CEO took to the airwaves this weekend, disputing their claims that cabin crew perform unpaid labour.
Speaking to CTV News, Alexis von Hoensbroech said that flight attendants are compensated “for everything.”
“Even if they don’t fly a single hour in a month, they still get a full salary,” he told the broadcaster. "Our flight attendants are compensated for every single hour they work ... everything else would be illegal, naturally."
His remarks drew a sharp response from the WestJet Component of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which took to social media to say they’ve never heard of a flight attendant being paid without being scheduled to work.
“Still waiting to meet the flight attendant who gets paid 80 hours for working zero,” the union wrote.
CUPE and WestJet have been negotiating regularly since September 2025, meeting several times a month in an effort to reach an a new labour agreement.
At the centre of the dispute is the longstanding issue of how and when cabin crew are paid. Flight attendants say they perform an average of 35 hours of unpaid work each month, arguing they are “responsible for passenger safety from the moment they report for duty.”
Flight attendants have also upped the ante in recent days and are pushing for public support as contract negotiations stall and a possible strike mandate looms.
While the results of an ongoing strike vote won’t be known until later this week, some members of the WestJet component of the Canadian Union of Public Workers (CUPE) are already wearing red lanyards embossed with the words “Ready to Strike.”
Other cabin crew are wearing lanyards reading “Here for Your Safety” or “Fair Contract Now.”
In his interview with CTV News, von Hoensbroech acknowledged that the contract with flight attendants needs to be updated, but said a study by the federal government found that flight attendants were paid fairly.
However, CUPE has heavily criticized the federal probe, arguing that time spent on pre-flight checks, passenger boarding, security passes, and airport delays often goes unpaid, but wasn’t clearly included in the study’s definition of work.
“The parameters of this process have been noticeably tilted towards the industry position,” Wesley Lesosky, president of CUPE’s airline division, said at the time the study was released.
The earliest that a strike could occur is 02AUG.
