The trend toward fewer strikes, year over year, has been persistent and relentless for decades in Canada. Workers are walking off the job and striking less every year. Occasionally, there have been minor upticks, but nothing has even come close to the high tide in the 1970s and 1980s. That is, not until last year.
In 2023, over a half-million workers walked off the job, resulting in over 6.5 million workdays lost—the most in nearly 40 years, and by a significant margin. That increase was overwhelmingly concentrated among public sector workers—which is a break from the past, where private sector workers were the key drivers of strikes in Canada.
Soaring living costs, sagging real wages, and anti-worker policies have pushed public sector workers to the brink—but they are striking back like never before.
The long decline of strike activity, interrupted
Strike activity—as measured by workdays “lost” to strikes—in Canada peaked in 1976, the year of the country’s largest single day labour protest, and has been on a downward trend ever since. By the early 2000s, strikes had reached historic lows, comparable to the 1950s, when the population was much smaller and collective bargaining rights had only recently been recognized.
At the heights of labour militancy, most strikes were by private sector workers. Since then, decades of attacks on unions and labour rights by governments and employers, offshoring unionized jobs, and shifting employment to less unionized industries has devastated private sector union density. In 1981, around 30 per cent of private sector workers were unionized, while that figure sat at just 15 per cent in 2022.
Public sector unionization rates have always been high, yet those workers had to fight hard to exercise their right to strike due to a wide array of legislative bans on public sector strikes—bans which were struck down as unconstitutional by a Supreme Court decision in 2015. Since then, public sector workers have been more likely to strike, but the overall activity remained very low—until last year.
Public sector workers accounted for 86 per cent of workdays lost due to strikes last year. In one year alone, they struck for as many work days as private sector workers did for the prior eight years. What was driving this historic upsurge?
About one-fifth of those strike days were during the federal public service strike. In April of 2023, 155,000 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) employed by the federal government struck to demand a raise after many years of declining real wages, more commitment to anti-racism in the workplace, and greater control over work conditions, especially on remote work.
The PSAC strike was perhaps the biggest ever against a single employer in Canada, and set a high bar for the year. But despite that—and other high profile labour struggles like the Metro grocery worker strike—2023 was on track to be an underwhelming year in terms of total strike activity. That trajectory changed sharply toward the end of the year, from below average to historic levels of labour strife—driven by the massive public sector strikes in Quebec.
Cost of living crisis driving public sector labour militancy
Why have public sector workers, in particular, been so militant? It comes down to a combination of ingredients. Take an inflationary crisis rapidly eroding worker’s real wages, combine with years of wage suppression by employers, and season with ongoing defunding of public services. Finish with very large numbers of frustrated workers simultaneously in contract negotiations, therefore all in a position to strike together.
The cost of living crisis has inflicted widespread pain on workers, particularly those in the public sector. Below, the chart compares workers’ real wage growth by sector for each province. Public sector workers are far behind their private sector counterparts in every province since 2018. Even worse, most public sector workers across Canada suffered an inflationary pay cut in that time.
Some of the gap is due to timing, as unionized workers that signed contracts prior to runaway inflation saw their purchasing power crumble. Yet, public sector wage growth has long been depressed. From 2009 to 2018, public sector wage growth still lagged in all but two provinces, leading the private sector only in Newfoundland, Canada’s most unionized province.
Government interference in public sector bargaining to suppress wages is practically a Canadian tradition. Public sector workers did not win collective bargaining rights until 1965—following a massive wildcat strike by postal workers—and have had to fight governments to use those rights ever since.
Interference takes many forms, like back-to-work, essential services, or mandated contract legislation. Or budget cuts and underfunding that undermine wage demands. Finally, there are non-legislative tactics like bad faith bargaining or abuse of the arbitration process.
For most of Canadian history, governments faced few limitations in repressing their employees’ bargaining power. In recent decades, Canada’s courts have repeatedly affirmed public sector workers’ right to bargain and strike. Yet, that has not stopped governments from innovating new methods of undermining those rights.
From 2000 to 2022, there have been 80 instances of legislative interference by governments. In recent years, we have witnessed interference campaigns, not always successful, by governments in nearly all provinces and at the federal level, but most egregiously in Alberta and Ontario.
Quebec’s 2023 Common Front strike
Quebec has often been the exception to the rule—as an environment with higher union density than most of the rest of Canada, a larger role for the (highly unionized) state in the economy, and a more favourable legal environment for unions. Early in the pandemic, public sector unions and the Quebec government negotiated short placeholder contracts for the vast majority of public employees. These deals were set to expire around the same time in 2023. This meant that 80 per cent of the province’s public sector workers needed a new contract simultaneously.
Unions were expecting a very difficult round of negotiations with a government aiming to play hardball with public servants. Preparing for serious confrontation, Quebec’s three largest unions, representing over 440,000 education, healthcare, and social service workers, formed a pact to present a united voice in the coming contract negotiation—The Common Front.
Negotiations stalled as the government refused to budge from egregiously low wage offers and demands of concessions on pensions and working conditions. Having already endured serious losses in real wages due to inflation, public sector workers were unwilling to accept anything less than a real raise.
Frustrated members gave overwhelming mandates to strike, indefinitely if needed. And they did—first for a few hours, then a few days, then a seven day province-wide strike. They were joined by additional unions representing over 100,000 teachers and nurses who were also in negotiations at the same time. At the high point of the strike, nearly one in 10 workers—all workers—in Quebec were on strike.
Labour leaders threatened an indefinite strike if the government’s position did not improve by the new year. For the first time in generations, there was credible talk of a general strike in Canada. The strikers enjoyed very high levels of support from the public and private sector unions.
Premier Legault announced the government had no intention of using back-to-work legislation to break the strike. Under intense pressure by the unions, the government yielded, leading to new contracts that secured real wage gains, as well as advances on pensions and working conditions.
Instead of the workers, it was the government that was forced to make concessions. Why did the government back down from its previously unmovable position? Surely, they were significantly motivated by the historic scale of the strike.
In total, over a half-million workers went out on strike, participated in mass demonstrations, and engaged in militant actions like blockading major ports. In the visual below, we can see the top 10 most intense strike years at an industry level, in terms of days not worked, going back to 1946 when data collection began.
Quebec’s 2023 Common Front Strike tops the chart by a large margin both by the number of ongoing stoppages and the amount of work days lost. By the maximum number of workers involved in a sustained strike, it was second only to the original Common Front Strike of 1972, one of the most powerful episodes of class struggle in Canadian history.
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Next stop, Alberta?
We could witness another eruption of class struggle from public sector workers sooner rather than later. Alberta’s austerity-driven government has taken interference and wage suppression to another level. Accordingly, public sector workers there have suffered the most brutal wage setbacks in recent years, especially in health care and education.
Like in Quebec, the government’s plan to force wage rollbacks was paused by the pandemic. Instead, it signed short, status-quo deals with most of its employees that expire around the same time in 2024. Therefore about 80 per cent of Alberta’s public sector workforce are in contract negotiations simultaneously this year.
Bargaining is going as poorly as expected. The province has taken the unprecedented step of issuing secret mandates to all public sector employers, setting red lines for wage restraint. Once again, a government aggressively seeking wage cuts comes up against the majority of its employees, who are refusing anything less than a real raise.
The Common Front shows that workers have power in numbers. Strategic alignment of contracts to bring as many workers into bargaining as possible gets results. There is ample evidence that more broad-based bargaining works better for workers. In Quebec and Alberta, public sector workers were virtually forced into this situation, but it can also be done intentionally. The resurgent United Auto Workers union in the U.S. has issued a call for unions to line their contracts up to end on May 1st, 2028 for an all-out general strike. Canadian workers could do the same.
