How Did Canadian Workers And Unions Fare In 2024?

How did labour fare in 2024?

In many ways, the Canadian labour market and labour movement are both looking more like they did pre-pandemic. Hopes of using the relatively robust post-pandemic economy as a springboard to build something better seem to largely be fading.

Strike activity was down considerably in 2024, after reaching historic heights the previous year, by some measures. Wage growth has cooled, even as unions continue to seek pay increases to account for post-pandemic inflation. While some legislative gains were made this past year, governments also intervened in several important labour actions to end or pre-empt strikes and to come to the aid of employers who locked out their workers. In particular, the federal government has been especially coercive in its use of back-to-work orders.

Yet workers and unions did also engage in important fights in 2024.

Early in the year, teachers in Saskatchewan went on strike against the right-wing government of Scott Moe, seeking wage increases and the right to bargain over class sizes, an issue over which teachers’ unions in other provinces already negotiate.

In late June, mechanics at WestJet struck the airline and later defied a government arbitration order, ultimately winning a considerable 26 per cent wage increase. The WestJet dispute was perhaps one of the most noteworthy examples of union militancy in 2024, though it also proved to be the opening salvo in a series of repressive actions by the Trudeau Liberal government to end work stoppages in the federal jurisdiction.

The following month, LCBO workers in Ontario engaged in a contentious strike against the Doug Ford government’s plan to further privatize liquor retailing in the province. While the future of the LCBO remains uncertain, workers did manage to secure important job protections.

In another inspiring case, law professors became the first faculty to unionize at McGill University, but were then forced to wage a months-long struggle to bring the administration to the bargaining table.

Federal public servants also found themselves engaged in several ongoing battles. Like many other workers, federal government employees continued to resist their employer’s forced return-to-office policy. The Treasury Board has slowly increased the number of required days of in-person work, despite evidence emerging later in the year that the government knew that productivity and worker satisfaction were better under the remote work model. Later in the year, a pension surplus resulted in accusations that the government was stealing workers’ pension contributions.

Of course, the year concluded with a long strike at Canada Post, which like several other federal work stoppages this year, ended with government intervention and union members being denied their rights to freely bargain and strike.

If these were some of the major highlights, what do the data on work stoppages and wage settlements reveal?

Strikes in 2024

At first glance, the strike data for January through October 2024 (data on the final two months of the year are not yet released) look relatively impressive. Compared to the previous decade, there were considerably more strikes in effect in the last two years. However, 2024 was less notable than this suggests.

The large number of work stoppages recorded as “in effect” last year is a hangover from the Quebec Common Front strikes that spanned late 2023 and early 2024. According to Employment and Social Development Canada, Quebec accounted for 661 of the 733 (90.2 per cent) work stoppages in effect in 2024.

In fact, only 129 work stoppages started in 2024, fewer than the 181 and 157 begun in 2021 and 2022, respectively, and only slightly more than the 115 initiated in 2019 (2020 saw only 66 work stoppages due to pandemic lockdowns). The 745 work stoppages started in 2023 are a significant outlier, almost entirely accounted for by the co-ordinated upsurge that took place in Quebec in late 2023 and early 2024.

Without Quebec’s strike contribution, 2024 was a relatively quiet year for work disruptions. In Ontario, there were only 28 strikes last year. In British Columbia, there were just nine strikes. In all other provinces and territories, work stoppages registered in the single digits.

Of course, in historical perspective, recent strike activity looks especially paltry.

Again, these data measure strikes in effect, making last year appear more impressive than it actually was. Even then, the post-pandemic strike upsurge came nowhere near the heights of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when annual work stoppages regularly numbered more than 1,000, and the Canadian workforce was much smaller.

The decline in strike activity in 2024 is further highlighted by reviewing the total person-days lost to work stoppages (the number of workers involved in strikes and lockouts, multiplied by the number of days out of work). After nearly 6.6 million person-days lost in 2023 — again owing to the Quebec Common Front strikes — this figure fell to 1,086,186 in 2024.

According to these two important measures, Canadian labour exercised its strike muscle much less last year than it did in 2023 and arguably in the previous two years as well.

Wage Growth Cooled, But So Did Inflation

On the wage front, workers’ fortunes also slumped somewhat, though disinflation made pay increases stretch farther. In the first 10 months of 2024, average annual union wage settlements in major collective agreements covering 500 or more workers dropped to 3.1 per cent, down from 3.5 per cent the previous year.

However, in inflation-adjusted dollars, union wages in 2024 looked slightly better than 2023. In the latter year, inflation still averaged 3.9 per cent, while it tracked around 2 per cent for much of 2024. Thus, in real terms, major wage settlements put many union members slightly ahead in 2024 as average wage increases outstripped inflation. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that marginal gains spread over one or two years do not make up for the often significant inflationary losses suffered by workers since 2021.

Research featured in Class Struggle in early 2024 suggested that the union wage advantage remains strong across the country. Yet the consistently stronger hourly wage growth among all workers (unionized and non-unionized) is likely to cut into the union premium. If unions aim to grow their base, they need to demonstrate their advantages to prospective members. Allowing inflation to undermine workers’ purchasing power over several years doesn’t make a strong case for collective bargaining.

The Legislative Front and Government Coercion

This past year was a relatively quiet one when it came to labour legislation. In Manitoba, the NDP government delivered on several key labour movement priorities, passing a strong anti-scab law and reintroducing card-check unionization with a simple 50 per cent plus one threshold.

As I covered back in March, B.C. continues to demonstrate the importance of card-check unionization for encouraging new union organizing and increasing union density. When the provincial Labour Relations Board releases the figures for 2024 in March, we will see if the initial momentum following the introduction of card-check persisted last year.

Also in B.C., the NDP passed new protections for online platform workers. While these reforms were more progressive than other jurisdictions, they nevertheless received strong criticism from labour for maintaining the sub-employment status of platform workers and continuing to largely deny these workers full employment rights.

The biggest story when it came to governments’ responses to labour this year was the troubling use of coercive measures to end work stoppages. No provincial government outdid the federal Liberals on this front. Aircraft mechanics, rail workers, port workers and postal workers were all on the receiving end of state coercion, having their strikes ended or pre-empted or watching their employers receive special government treatment. Rather than table and debate back-to-work legislation as in the past, the federal government has taken to using a provision of the Canada Labour Code to punt work stoppages and either request that the Canada Industrial Relations Board impose binding arbitration or delay strikes until they are less disruptive and thus less effective, as was the case with Canada Post.

But it wasn’t only at the federal level where governments interfered with free collective bargaining.

As tens of thousands of public sector workers attempted to bargain new contracts, perhaps the most anti-labour government in Canada, the United Conservative Party government of Danielle Smith in Alberta, continued to resort to a series of “secret mandates” to tie the hands of public sector employers and deny workers the ability to bargain meaningful wage gains and other improvements. Educational workers in Alberta also experienced delay tactics similar to Canada Post workers, as the provincial government pre-empted their strike with an imposed ‘inquiry commission.’

A major challenge ahead for labour will be how to respond to these cases of serious government overreach. The tendency of labour to rely on the courts for redress has proven inadequate, though thus far there seems to be little appetite for a more forceful and co-ordinated union response.

The Year Ahead

Will 2025 continue the general trend of quieting down on the labour front, or will unions go back on the offensive? The answer will in part depend on the contracts up for renewal in 2025.

Several large collective agreements will be negotiated this year. Collective agreements covering nearly 6,000 employees working for the City of Montreal expired on Dec. 31, 2024. Hundreds of indoor and outdoor public employees at the City of Victoria also had their contracts expire at the end of 2024. More than 3,500 ferry workers in B.C. have a contract up for negotiation this coming fall. As other agreements expire across the provinces, particularly in the private sector, we will see how unions position themselves.

How unions respond to stagnant union density, if at all, remains another important question.

In the years following the pandemic, union density hasn’t budged. This is a significant problem. The pandemic clearly demonstrated workers’ desire for better wages, working conditions and protections. That the labour movement has been largely unable to meet the challenge of the moment is truly unfortunate. With card-check back in place in B.C. and Manitoba, unions need to commit to concerted organizing in these jurisdictions to move the needle on union membership. Treading water at 30 per cent density — while barely breaking 15 per cent in the private sector — simply won’t do any longer. A strong movement requires growing union membership well beyond where it currently stands.

Let’s hope 2025 turns out to be a year worth celebrating. But there’s much work to do in the meantime.

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