THE union for Air Canada’s 10,000 flight attendants said early today that it has reached a tentative agreement to end a strike.

Air Canada and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Cupe) resumed talks late Monday for the first time since the strike began over the weekend. 

Cupe said the agreement will guarantee members pay for work performed while planes are on the ground, resolving one of the major issues that drove the strike.

“Unpaid work is over. We have reclaimed our voice and our power,” the union said in a statement. “When our rights were taken away, we stood strong, we fought back — and we secured a tentative agreement that our members can vote on.”

It followed Cupe’s declaration that the flight attendants wouldn’t return to work even though the strike was declared illegal.

The Canada Industrial Relations Board had declared the strike illegal Monday and ordered the flight attendants back on the job. But Cupe said it would defy the directive. 

Union leaders also ignored a weekend order to submit to binding arbitration and end the strike by Sunday afternoon.

The board is an independent administrative tribunal that interprets and applies Canada’s employment laws. The government ordered the board to intervene.

Union leaders across Canada have objected to the federal government’s repeated use of a law that cuts off workers’ right to strike and forces them into arbitration, a step the government took in recent years with workers at ports, railways and elsewhere.

Aviation analytics firm Cirium said that as of Monday afternoon, Air Canada had called off at least 1,219 domestic flights and 1,339 international flights since last Thursday, when the carrier began gradually suspending its operations ahead of the strike and lockout.

Flight attendants walked off the job early Saturday, after turning down the airline’s demand to enter into government-directed arbitration, which allows a third-party mediator to decide the terms of a new contract.