Canada’s ‘labour moment’ expected to stick around for a couple more years: experts

Canada’s unions seem to be having a moment and labour experts don’t see the increase in strikes, lockouts and job action scaling back anytime soon.

Since 2021, federal government data shows that more than 1.4 million unionized workers have been involved in more than 1,100 strikes and lockouts that have amounted to 10 or more person-days not worked. In 2023 alone, there were 745 work stoppages resulting in more than 6.5 million person-days not worked including a major PSAC strike that saw more than 155,000 federal government workers walk off the job.

Labour experts say unions are being more aggressive than before and are more willing than ever to strike due to the rising cost of living and years of high inflation.

“These kinds of upticks, or upsurges, they always seem to come out of nowhere,” said Barry Eidlin, an associate professor of sociology at McGill University. “Look at it retrospectively, and you can see that this has been along time coming and a long time in the making.”

Eidlin says that for the last few decades, many Canadian workers have experienced what he calls “deteriorating job quality”, combined with stagnant wages and eroding benefits. Those factors, he said, were made more pronounced by the pandemic and gave unionized workers more bargaining power.

“You have these large swaths of the workforce who were, on the one hand, heralded as these essential workers doing this essential work to keep Canadian society functioning,” he said. “But when push came to shove, they were treated as disposable… that really crystalized a lot of these broader trends that have been going on for many decades.”

While wages are one demand pushing unions to strike, union leaders have been adamant better working conditions are also a key priority.

Canada’s inflation rate started steadily increasing in July 2020 due to the interruption of global and local supply chains, the war in Ukraine, climate factors and higher production costs related to the pandemic. Since it peaked at 8.1 per cent in June 2022, inflation has slowed to 2.5 per cent last month.

During that time of high inflation, many collective agreements came up for renewal and unions pushed for higher wages to keep up with inflation. Last year, for example, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) secured a deal with the federal government for wage increases totalling 12.6 per cent compounded over the life of their agreement, in addition to an extra 3.7 per cent raise for the average PSAC member in the Treasury Board bargaining units.

“Coming out of the pandemic, we see lower than usual levels of unemployment, we see higher than usual levels of inflation,” said Larry Savage, a labour studies professor at Brock University. “We see sky-high cost of living, an affordability crisis, and these have all combined to help drive demands for higher wages and better contracts, and workers are more willing to go on strike to get these things.”

Faced with changing economic conditions, Savage says unionized workers themselves are driving the push for better working conditions and wages.

“The pandemic revealed the true value of frontline workers, and a lot of these folks are just not willing to go back to a job that pays poverty wages and next to nothing in terms of benefits, and they’re demanding more for themselves,” Savage said.

According to the Bank of Canada, wage growth peaked during the pandemic between 4.5 per cent and 6 per cent. Pre-pandemic, the central bank says wage growth averaged 2 per cent to 3 per cent.

Even with inflation dropping, economists expect to see more workers hit the picket line over the next couple of years. Concordia economics professor Moshe Lander says it will take time before the days of high inflation are far enough in the rear view mirror for unions and employers to be closer together again on the wage front.

“Right now, if you’re trying to negotiate, say, a three to five year contract, one of the things that you should be trying to negotiate for is to recoup the 8 per cent purchasing power that you lost in 2022,” he said. “But as 2022 starts to look more and more like a distant memory, it’s going to be very hard to make a claim for anything other than two and a half percent.”

Until then, Moshe and other economists expect more unions will push to have wage growth similar to their counterparts.

“Once one union goes on strike, and it incentivizes all of the others to go on strike as well,” Lander said. “Each time there’s success, it creates the baseline for the next negotiation for the next union that well, they got 10 per cent, so we want at least 10 per cent and then the next will push for 11 per cent.”