Part‐time Shift: The Struggle over the Casualization of Airline Customer Sales and Service Agent Work*

Abstract

Par L'examen du conflit, dans les années 1980, entourant L'utilisation par Air Canada de travailleuses et travailleurs à temps partiel pour réaliser le travail d'agentes et agents de ventes et de service à la clientèle, cet article vise à développer nos connaissances de la précarisation du travail col‐blanc des femmes dans le secteur des services dans un contexte de restructuration économique ainsi que du rôle joué par les syndicats dans le façonnement du rapport d'emploi. L'étude analyse comment les efforts d'Air Canada pour rendre le travail plus flexible colorèrent les négotiations collectives et incitèrent les agentes et agents à faire la grève pour la première fois de leur histoire et à intégrer leur syndicat à un syndicat plus puissant et militant. L'article se penche sur les effets contradictoires du processus de précarisation sur la capacité des agentes, en particulier, de jouir de plus d'indépendance et d'égalité sur le marché du travail. Il souligne aussi les difficultés auxquelles est confronts le syndicat dans ses efforts pour résister à la déstandardisation. Through an examination of the struggle, during the 1980s, over the use by Air Canada of part‐time workers to perform customer sales and service agent work, this article aims to expand our knowledge and understanding of the casualization of women's white‐collar, service‐sector employment under economic restructuring and the role played by unions in shaping the contours of the employment relationship. The study focusses on how Air Canada's attempt to promote labour flexibility coloured contract negotiations and was pivotal in prompting agents to take strike action for the first time in their history, as well as merge their union with a more powerful and militant one. It examines the contradictory effects of the casualization process on agents' ability to achieve independence and equality in the labour market and underscores the difficulties faced by the union in resisting destandardization.

Puzzling Skills: Feminist Political Economy Approaches

“…While ostensible about the redistribution of control to workers, methods such as Total Quality Management and other strategies developed in the auto sector have been analyzed to reveal the ways workers are controlled in the process (Armstrong et al ). Organizational strategies, such as casual employment and part‐time work, have also been examined as forms of managerial control (Shalla ; Vosko ). Similarly, new accountability strategies based on counting processes and outcomes which are justified in the public sector in terms of responsibility to the public have been examined as forms of electronic surveillance.…”

“…From the 1970s on, work has been a central focus of Canadian feminist political economy, including the “work of creating the concepts and categories” (Smith :353). In the pages of this journal, feminist political economists have explored occupational segregation (Armstrong and Armstrong ; Boyd ; Fox and Fox ), unions (Creese ; Marchak ), gender consciousness at work (Livingstone and Luxton ; Northcott and Lowe ), domestic labor (Sinclair and Felt ), class (Carroll ; Li ), volunteers (Mellow ), flexibilization (Shalla ), income (Goyer ), and discourses related to workplace ideology (Gazso ) and education (Gaskell ) to name only some issues taken up from this perspective. In the process, they have contributed to and sparked international developments.…”

Time Warped: The Flexibilization and Maximization of Flight Attendant Working Time*

“…Within this context, the organization of working time in advanced industrial countries has undergone a fundamental transformation. Studies have identified a growing incidence of shift work, evening and night work, weekend work, reduced workweek, overtime, flex-time, multiple job holding, and other forms of non-standard or atypical work arrangements (Bosch, Dawkins and Michon, 1994;Boulin, 2001;Felstead and Jewson, 1999;Golden and Figart, 2000;Houseman and Nakamura, 2001;Human Resources Development Canada, 1994;Linder, 2000;O'Reilly and Fagan, 1998;Shalla, 2003;Statistics Canada, 1998;Zeytinoglu, 1999). Much of the empirical research has pointed to an ever-greater differentiation of workingtime arrangements and polarization in hours of work.…”