BEYOND THE PICKET LINE: The Far-Reaching Effects of Canada's Biggest Strike

Jordan Leichnitz

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) just led the biggest strike ever in Canada. You’d be forgiven though if you hardly noticed it – most Canadians didn’t. But while the strike itself was relatively brief, its outcomes are set to ripple out across the country and impact Canadian workers for years to come.

More than 155,000 federal workers walked off the job on April 19, kicking off the largest strike against a single employer in Canadian history – and like most great upheavals, this confrontation was years in the making.

PSAC and the government began negotiations in 2021, just as inflation started to erode the purchasing power of their members’ pay cheques. A year later, with little progress on their key demands, growing antagonism in the negotiations, and the cost of living soaring, PSAC walked away from the table.

Far from the fat-cat caricature of government employees, the core of the impacted workers are largely in administrative roles across government departments and agencies. They are mostly women and over 60% of them make less than $70,000 per year. Like many in the federal public sector, their wages have been locked into agreements with low increases far outstripped by recent inflation – a problem so acute that the average federal public sector worker’s inflation-adjusted wages haven’t grown in sixteen years.

Under President Chris Aylward, PSAC is known for being a bullish negotiator. The union’s leadership undoubtedly saw 2023 as a critical window of opportunity to secure a deal before the next election. A friendly Liberal government supported by the labour-allied NDP is a much better negotiating partner than a future Conservative government more inclined to freeze hiring, slash expenditures and cut the public service. By early this year, inflation was slowing, but PSAC members wages had not kept pace – securing a better deal now could close that gap and secure those gains against any future political storm.

Armed with a massive $43 million strike fund and with many members embittered by Minister Mona Fortier’s sudden decision to unilaterally force workers back into the office last December, the stage was set for a near-certain confrontation with government this year.

The tentative agreement reached on May Day shows that PSAC’s gamble largely appears to have paid off: they secured a new deal for 120,000 of their workers with important wage gains. The deal includes wage increases of 12.6% compounded over the life of the agreement and a pensionable $2,500 one-time lump sum payment for workers, an improvement from the 9% that was the government’s initial offer.

PSAC can also claim some progress on the issue of remote work, with a new agreement to address workers’ remote work requests individually and in writing – although managers will have the last say. The government also committed to a re-assessment of its current remote work directive, jointly with the unions.

The deal offers good gains for many PSAC workers, and while it may be a rocky path to ratification, the most interesting impacts of this strike and tentative agreement will go far beyond the PSAC members involved.

There are a handful of takeaways from the PSAC strike that hint at the way evolving attitudes about work are reshaping the Canadian labour landscape.

First, the public was more supportive of striking workers than many inside the Ottawa bubble expected. Earlier this year, former Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick opined that the chaos and public anger generated by a strike could “end up weakening the government and its allies and helping Mr. Poilievre,” ushering in a Conservative government.

In fact, the union enjoyed a relatively friendly political environment during the strike. Far from championing back-to-work legislation, the Conservatives chose to awkwardly sidestep the question of what they would do had they been in power in favour of raking the government over the coals for problems with service delivery. With Pierre Poilievre enjoying new support from unionized workers, Conservative caucus decided that discretion was the better part of valour.

Once the strike was underway, public polling showed a surprising level of public sympathy for public sector workers. In an Angus Reid poll taken in the first couple days of the strike, two-thirds (65%) of Canadians supported the union’s demand for wage premiums of $2.50 per hour for overtime and night shifts, and more than half endorsed the idea of government workers having the right to work from home. This is probably more a reflection of Canadians’ desire for their own working conditions than it is commentary on PSAC’s demands, but it remains significant that Canadians were supportive of workers traditionally considered relatively privileged, even when a strike could personally inconvenience them.

Second, there were important generational differences in how the labour disruption was seen by Canadians. An Ipsos survey conducted in the middle of the strike found that a majority of Gen Z (57%) and Millennials (56%) supported the workers and their demands, compared to 45% of Boomers. A full 37% of Gen X Canadians, by contrast, said that they didn’t feel sympathetic to the striking workers. Anecdotally, many employers will tell you that younger Canadians are more assertive when it comes to their labour rights than older generations – and they’re ready to work together to make gains of their own.

Third, workers are mobilized and militant. When concerning irregularities were revealed in the strike vote, some commentators were quick to suggest that it meant that there wasn’t strong support for the strike from rank and file members. But workers voted with their feet, and 96% of non-essential workers turned up on picket lines across the country. PSAC was able to organize and drive picket line turnout even in an environment where many members predominately work from home, including coordinating escalating actions as the strike wore on.

Now that a tentative agreement has been reached, high engagement and expectations among these members could present a challenge to ratification. Already, the Canada Employment Immigration Union (CEIU) – the largest group covered by the deal, about a third of impacted workers – is urging members to vote no and hold out for bigger gains on wages and remote work. 

Fourth, this wage settlement broke a trend and will spur wage increases in other workplaces. Within the federal public sector, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 2228 and Association of Canadian Financial Officers (ACFO-ACAF) recently settled for a 10.9% compounded wage increase, and a 2% bonus. Now that PSAC got a better deal, these agreements are being revised upwards to match.

The PSAC deal will set the pattern for dozens of other federal contracts currently under negotiation with the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) and other unions. It will also echo out into the provinces, making anti-labour moves like Premier Doug Ford’s Bill 124 with its 1% cap on public sector salaries increasingly untenable.

The wage gains in the agreement will also set a trend that will impact non-unionized workers. For most Canadians, wages have not kept pace with inflation – meaning that wage increases like the one secured by PSAC are largely going to catch workers up to increases in the cost of living that have already happened, rather than spur inflation. Now that the largest employer in the country has moved to close that gap, expect workers in other sectors to use this as a new benchmark.

Finally, the focus on remote work in these negotiations is a harbinger of things to come, as Canadian workers in a tight labour market demand more control over where and how they do their jobs. The pandemic irrevocably reshaped the workplace for most Canadians – by early 2022, as many as half of Canadians worked from home at least some days each week, and most want to continue to do so.

The PSAC agreement was the first major post-pandemic labour negotiation and it put remote work in the centre of the table as a non-wage item. Upping the stakes was the government’s unilateral directive to bring workers back to the office two to three days a week, only to have people sent to buildings with rodent issues or working from the floor due to lack of space.  

Now that the tentative agreement with PSAC makes remote work something to be decided on a case-by-case basis, the door is open for workers to have a say in where they do their jobs. The joint review of the remote work directive will inevitably bring out the research that supports greater flexibility in the workplace. An entrenchment of remote work for the public sector is likely to spill over into the private sector, where flexibility is key to retaining workers.

In sum, while the PSAC strike itself may not have directly impacted many Canadians, it’s far from inconsequential. The gains the union has won with this high-stakes, historic strike will echo out into other sectors, public and private alike, and the power of young Canadian workers willing to fight for better wages and working conditions will be with us for years to come.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jordan Leichnitz - Jordan Leichnitz is an Ottawa-based consultant with two decades of experience in progressive political strategy and campaigns at the federal, provincial and municipal level. She spent ten years on Parliament Hill working in senior strategy positions for four Leaders of the New Democratic Party of Canada, including serving as Deputy Chief of Staff, overseeing policy development and handling issues management for the parliamentary caucus. Since 2020, Jordan has served as the Canada Program Manager for the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a German political foundation. Jordan holds a Master's degree in Political Science from the University of Ottawa, and lives in Ottawa with her partner and two young children.

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