diff --git a/octavia/common/base_taskflow.py b/octavia/common/base_taskflow.py
index 4fb3e3a183..1d072cc955 100644
--- a/octavia/common/base_taskflow.py
+++ b/octavia/common/base_taskflow.py
@@ -16,6 +16,9 @@
 import concurrent.futures
 import datetime
 
+# work around for https://bugs.python.org/issue7980
+import _strptime  # noqa: F401 pylint: disable=unused-import
+
 from oslo_config import cfg
 from taskflow import engines as tf_engines
 
diff --git a/releasenotes/notes/fix-python2-attributeerror-strptime-89a7350c55ac8818.yaml b/releasenotes/notes/fix-python2-attributeerror-strptime-89a7350c55ac8818.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..95eaf051df
--- /dev/null
+++ b/releasenotes/notes/fix-python2-attributeerror-strptime-89a7350c55ac8818.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+---
+fixes:
+  - |
+    Fix a potential AttributeError exception at init time in the housekeeping
+    service when using python2 because of an issue with thread safety when
+    calling strptime for the first time.