A former WestJet flight attendant says she left her job because there was “too much unpaid work.”
More than 4,000 WestJet flight attendants are set to walk off the job on Sunday morning if a deal isn’t reached before then.
The union issued a 72-hour strike notice on Thursday. WestJet followed shortly afterward with a lockout notice.
The union has said one of the key issues is unpaid work for duties such as ground tasks. WestJet has said all duties are compensated through a “credit hour” system rather than an hourly rate.
Calleigh Gingras had worked as a flight attendant with the airline for a couple of years.
“It was a job that I really enjoyed,” she told CTV News Channel on Friday. “But the pay is just not enough and there’s too much unpaid work that was happening for it to be sustainable for me.”
She said she is starting a new job this fall.
Gingras said the unpaid work included arriving at the airport about an hour before departure, completing mandatory safety checks on the aircraft and attending a pre-flight briefing with the pilot.
“Then you have boarding,” she added, including briefing passengers seated in exit rows.
They were not paid for the time sitting between flights, she said.
“You could be sitting for hours,” she said. “And the examples go on.”
The potential strike would mark the second involving flight attendants in about a year after about 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants went on strike for three days in August 2025 over a similar labour dispute.
“The cost of living is out of control so I think now it’s getting harder ... to ignore,” Gingras said of the wage concerns.
With files from The Canadian Press
