Air North flight attendants have voted to ratify their first contract.

After a year of negotiations, a “tumultuous” job action in September, and up to four votes by the flight attendants earlier this month, Yukon Employees’ Union president Steve Geick said he is feeling “very good” about the new three-year agreement.

“With any negotiation ... you’re starting high and you’re working to somewhere in the middle,” Geick said this morning. “So we got basically the industry standard, not necessarily the top of the industry, but the membership was very happy.”

He declined to say how many of the company’s 24 to 30 flight attendants voted to ratify, but a union press release said they were “overwhelmingly” in favour.

The next step is for the company to ratify the agreement.

“I think that moving through this so we can get on with running the business is a good thing,” Air North president Joe Sparling said this morning. “It’s been a bit of a distraction the last year so I’m pleased to see that things are moving ahead.”

Negotiators for both parties are meeting with a mediator today in Vancouver for further discussions and to finalize the details and language of the contract.

It lays out an average five per cent wage increase for flight attendants over three years. They’ll also be guaranteed between 75 and 80 hours of work per month, up from the minimum of 70 promised by the company before.

The industry standard is between 75 and 80.

According to Sparling, the wage adjustment was scheduled to be retroactive to Oct. 1, but he said it’s been deferred for a month, along with job reclassifications for a handful of flight attendants.

“It’s really a reduction in the number of full-time flight attendants,” Sparling said. “We’re going up to 75 hours in non-peak periods and 80 hours in the peak periods. Well, the flying hasn’t changed. Obviously, we’ll require less full-time employees as a result of that.”

He said he expects about four flight attendants will have to be downgraded to part-time or on-call status starting Dec. 1.

There will be an opportunity for employees to volunteer for the change – he said he knows of one or two who would prefer to work seasonally.

It doesn’t have to be a painful process, he said.

“If we find that we have a mix of desires to work more and work less, and it can be all worked out within the existing group, then that’s good for everybody.”

Sparling said he anticipates no layoffs due to the increase in the minimum monthly hours.

Geick said this morning he was not able to comment on the job reclassifications.

Scheduling was one of the union’s biggest concerns, he said.

Before, there would be numerous revisions to the schedule, so employees were unclear at times on when they might be working.

Going forward, they’ll bid for shifts in blocks a month ahead of time.

“That’s one of the things that both us and the company agree is going to actually save the company money and streamline things,” Geick said.

Sparling agreed.

“We’re going to be paying exactly the number of flight attendants we need for the flying that has to be done, so we wont have any employees on the payroll being paid for hours that they’re not flying,” he said.

To address the issue of on-call work, Sparling said Air North would create a voluntary on-call list. The company’s core flying will be addressed through “very predictable schedules,” he said, and if flight attendants decide they’d like to be on call and make some extra money, they can be. But it’s not an obligation.

The new contract also sets out five days of paid sick leave per year, Sparling said.

Previously, the company dealt with sick leave informally, he said.

And the previous 16-step salary grid – meaning employees had to work 16 years to reach the top of the pay scale – has been lowered to nine steps.

Flight attendants voted to unionize in February of 2013. In October of that year, they began negotiating their first collective agreement.

Things heated up between the union and the company at the end of September this year. That’s when flight attendants started job action and announced they would only provide essential services on flights – no in-flight food or beverages.

The following day, Sparling sent home three flight attendants who showed up to work wearing pro-union T-shirts instead of their uniforms.

The job action ended two days later when both sides agreed to return to the table for further negotiations.

Geick acknowledges that period was “tumultuous.” He said what bothered him most were negative comments he heard made about the flight attendants during the job action, calling them “glorified waitresses.”

“These people are highly trained,” he said. “If something happens on that plane, you have a medical emergency, that’s the person that’s going to save your life. And, God forbid, a plane should go down and you need to be evacuated, those are the people that are going to save your life. Nothing against waitresses but (flight attendants) are a little more than glorified waitresses.”

By Oct. 10, the company reached a tentative agreement. Then the union held as many as four votes to accommodate employees’ varying schedules, Geick said.