Skyrocketing inflation, stagnant real wages and an exhausted work force have revived a dormant labour movement, putting unions back at the forefront of economic discourse. Will this last?
At a gathering of thousands of Unifor members in early December in Toronto, Lana Payne, president of Canada’s largest private-sector union, was noticeably riled up.
For most Canadian workers, wages have barely kept up with inflation, which marched upward for a year before peaking in July. Attrition – workers retiring out of the labour force early and burned-out young employees, especially in the gruelling food and hospitality sectors, leaving their jobs in droves to seek better working conditions – has dramatically tightened the labour market, leaving employers with far less leverage than they once had.
Then there’s the question of how long this moment can even last, and whether unions will be able to capitalize on it to build support among the majority of Canadian workers who are not unionized. “A recession is looming,” Ms. Payne said in an interview with The Globe and Mail this month. “This means, we could very well have a small window to achieve real change.”
In Ontario, for example, significant private-sector wage increases for unionized workers were driven in part by large wins by construction unions this past spring. Workers in the province represented by the International Brotherhood for Electrical Workers earned an 8.6-per-cent raise over three years, and the Ironworkers union secured a 9-per-cent raise over three years for its Toronto members.
Unionized workers, on average, still earn more per hour than non-unionized workers, but in the past five years, the wage gains of non-unionized workers have far outpaced those of union members. From November, 2017, to last month, nominal wages for unionized workers increased by 16 per cent, compared with almost 24 per cent for non-unionized workers. Cumulative inflation in that time period was roughly 18 per cent.
And south of the border, unions have won massive wage increases of a scope not seen in collective bargaining in at least 15 years. Although President Joe Biden and Congress recently forced a settlement to avert a national rail strike, it still gave workers a 24-per-cent raise over five years from 2020 to 2024.
A group of cleaners at Durham College campuses in Oshawa, Ont., and neighbouring Whitby represented by Unifor won a small but significant victory in September that emerged directly from a 17-day strike. The 70 workers received a total wage increase of 33 per cent over three years, with an immediate hourly raise of $2, or 12.5 per cent. These cleaners earn between $16 and $18 an hour.
But critically, Canada’s unionization rates, the proportion of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements, has remained roughly the same over the past three years, despite the pandemic. In 2019, 28.6 per cent of workers were unionized, compared with 28.7 per cent in 2022. Over the past four decades, unionization rates plunged, tumbling nine percentage points from 37.6 per cent in 1981.
While there are fewer unionized jobs in the private sector, public-sector unionization rates have remained roughly the same. Governments have played a heavy role in curbing the power of unions, Prof. Smith said. There is a debate playing out within the labour movement and the political left about whether unions are doing enough to capitalize on this moment in time. On one hand, unions appear to be increasingly mobilized and vocal. Unifor’s Ms. Payne and Ms. Bruske of the CLC have forcefully criticized the Bank of Canada’s rapid succession of rate increases.
CUPE’s national president, Mr. Hancock, issued a statement that same day telling members they should accept the deal, saying the wage increases were significant, and noting that no deal “contains all we seek.” A majority of members voted in favour of the deal. Tiff Macklem, the Bank of Canada Governor, has warned Canadians the unemployment rate will go up, as a result of rate hikes that are designed to tame inflation and slow down economic activity. If and when that starts to happen, the calculus could shift dramatically for unions.Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press
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