Lana Payne, Unifor National president, alongside workers at a picket line outside a Metro grocery store in Toronto as workers rejected a tentative deal triggering a strike of nearly 3,700 grocery store workers in the Greater Toronto Area, on July 29.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
As labour unrest spreads across Canada, workers emboldened by the tight job market and furious over soaring prices have a pointed message for their union leaders: Get back to the bargaining table and demand more.
In a series of current and recent strikes, from the B.C. port dispute to grocery workers in Toronto to educational support staff in Nova Scotia, workers rejected tentative agreements that their unions had reached with employers, even when those unions recommended that their members vote in favour of the deals.
While it’s not unheard of for workers to go against the advice of union leaders when it comes to voting on tentative contracts, it is not common either. And with a significant number of union contacts set to expire in the coming months, representing more than 160,000 public and private sector workers, the recent string of rejections serves as a wake-up call to both unions and employers that workers may be much more willing to hit the picket lines than they were before the pandemic.
“There may be a tendency in some quarters of the labour movement to view these tentative agreement rejections as a failure but they’re a sign that workers are rediscovering their right to strike and they’re willing to strike rather than opt for substandard deals,” said Larry Savage, a professor of labour studies at Brock University. “Union leaders have to catch up to the rank-and-file members who are leading these fights at the workplace.”
The key, he said, is that when a rejection happens, unions need to “immediately own the results and show they’re going to fight.” The strike at 27 Metro grocery stores in and around Toronto is a case in point, he said.
Since last Saturday roughly 3,700 clerks, cashiers and department managers have been off the job after rejecting a tentative deal negotiated and recommended by the local Unifor bargaining committee. Workers had already held a strike vote in June in which 100 per cent of members backed job action if a deal couldn’t be reached.
Tammy Laporte, a produce clerk who has worked at a Metro location in Toronto’s east end for 25 years, served on the bargaining committee and said the initial deal the union struck with management included “some fantastic gains” that would have made it a stellar contract only a few years ago, but with food prices and rent soaring “the money just wasn’t enough.”
The union said this week it wants wages boosted back to what they were during the early days of the pandemic, when Metro MRU-T and other grocers added a $2 per hour “hero pay” bonus, a reward the company and its rivals simultaneously cancelled in June, 2020.
Ms. Laporte said because of the gains in the tentative deal, the bargaining team felt it had to give union members the final say on whether to strike.
“The world changed over the pandemic and it speaks volumes that people are willing to forgo a paycheque for as long as it takes,” she said. “This will send a message to all retail workers across the board and to all the moneybags and billion-dollar CEOs.”
Workers and executives at other grocery chains are no doubt watching the strike outcome closely. A number of collective agreements in the sector are set to expire, with Unifor alone looking to renew a dozen contracts with chains owned by Metro Inc., Loblaw Cos. Ltd. L-T and Empire Foods Ltd. EMP-A-T over the next two years.
The recent rejections are likely to force union bargaining teams to do more to gauge the pulse of their members before talks begin, but it may also result in unions going into negotiations with more ambitious goals, Prof. Savage said. “This will raise the bar for other unions and employers.”
Not everyone is convinced the clutch of rejected deals will snowball into more workers hitting the picket lines. Robert Hickey, an associate professor of industrial relations at Queen’s University, dismissed the notion of “strike contagion” and said union agreements generally only serve as benchmarks for workers in similar industries or sectors.
He pointed to the B.C. port dispute, which affected the Vancouver region, the Prince Rupert area and Vancouver Island during a 13-day strike last month and included union concerns around issues such as port automation and outsourcing, in addition to wage demands.
Even so, the chaotic state of labour relations was on full display at the ports, with tentative deals that had been recommended by the International Longshore & Warehouse Union Canada bargaining committee rejected twice, first by a union caucus, and then days later by eligible voting members. In a third tentative deal, workers won new language that addressed the union’s concerns about employers outsourcing maintenance work to non-union contractors, with union members voting on the agreement Friday.
While the issues vary in different industries, they share one thing in common: paycheque erosion.
Hourly wages have been rising since the start of 2022, but they have trailed well behind the annual rate of inflation, a pattern that persisted until May of this year when inflation slowed to 3.4 per cent, before easing again in June to 2.8 per cent. As a result, the average worker saw their wages backslide in real, inflation-adjusted terms.
Wage data from Statistics Canada show union workers in particular have fallen behind, with annual wage gains that trailed inflation even as non-union workers pulled ahead.
“Wages are a lagging indicator, especially in the unionized sector,” said Lori Sterling, a senior counsel at the law firm Bennett Jones and a former federal deputy minister of labour. “This round of bargaining is a catch-up round, and we see it going back to more normal wage increases in the 2026 and on period.”
Doug Porter, chief economist at Bank of Montreal, shares that view. “The historical record shows that strike activity is highly correlated to inflation, with both reaching postwar extremes in the 1970s and early 1980s,” he wrote in a note this week, adding that labour unrest, like wages, is a lagging indicator. “Workers try to catch up to past inflation.”
Of course, that could mean several more years of potential unrest as unions push to erase real wage losses for their members.
Another factor that’s given workers more confidence to reject tentative deals has been the tight job market, though that is changing. In July the unemployment rate inched up to 5.5 per cent from its record low of 5 per cent earlier this year, but remained below its pre-pandemic average. While the number of job vacancies is dropping, falling to 760,000 in May from more than one million a year earlier, there are still 40 per cent more job openings than in 2019.
“This is a sign that the shoe is on the other foot in collective bargaining after a long period of time when employers had the bargaining power and could threaten workers with all kinds of consequences if they didn’t accept an unattractive deal,” said labour economist Jim Stanford.
In addition to workers rejecting tentative deals, Mr. Stanford points to other signs the balance of power has shifted, such as the collapse in the number of lockouts, which are akin to reverse strikes by employers to force workers to accept the terms of a contract. As of May there had been just two, compared with an average of 16 in the years before the pandemic.
Private sector unions have also become much more assertive, he said, with strikes becoming more frequent.
Still, in turning down a tentative deal that’s recommended by union negotiators, workers are taking a gamble that they can do better.
Sometimes it works. Last summer Ontario had the largest residential construction strike in 20 years after workers turned down a tentative deal put forward by their union. They eventually won a 2-per cent bump in wages compared with the rejected deal, according to industry reports.
Sometimes the gamble doesn’t pay off, though. Earlier this year the Nova Scotia government and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents school support staff across the province, reached a tentative deal the union recommended. It was accepted by union locals in seven regions, however workers in Halifax voted it down and went on strike, with better pay being the main sticking point.
The strike ended after five weeks, and while workers won some small concessions, the 6.5-per-cent pay hike over three years that was in the original deal stayed intact.
It’s also worth noting that while Canada has seen several high-profile labour battles, wage settlements over the last year have remained relatively modest. According to government data that track wage settlements covering at least 500 workers, the average annual wage adjustment so far in 2023 is 2.2 per cent, compared with 1.7 per cent in settlements reached in 2019.
Meanwhile, some lower-profile labour battles grind on. In late July mine workers at Windsor Salt, who have been off the job since mid-February, rejected a tentative deal their Unifor local bargaining team had recommended. As local union leader Jodi Nesbitt told CTV news after the agreement was reached, “we wouldn’t be bringing it forward if we didn’t feel confident that it was acceptable, however obviously our members are the final deciding factor.”
It raises a thorny question at the heart of the collective bargaining process: What happens if there is a disconnect between workers and their unions, and it turns into open revolt? Experts point to to Air Canada’s AC-T stretch of labour strife in 2011 and 2012, when the airline was embroiled in battles with its pilots and flight attendants, as the starkest example in recent memory.
In one instance, angry pilots launched an online petition that forced several Air Canada Pilots Association officials to resign ahead of their rejection of a tentative deal. Meanwhile flight attendants voted to reject a tentative deal not once, but twice, despite their union’s endorsement of the agreement. That led Air Canada to publicly question the legitimacy of the union bargaining committee.
“When a tentative agreement gets rejected the biggest challenge from the management perspective is, can you trust your bargaining partner at the table,” said Prof. Hickey. “Part of that trust is that once an agreement is reached, you’ll sell it to your members and get it ratified, and if you’re unable to do that, why am I bargaining with you?”
However, Mr. Stanford says rejections are just part of the ratification process, whether employers like it or not. “I don’t see this as a negative phenomenon at all,” he said. “While it means some disputes get lengthened and causes lots of internal debates, on the whole a rigorous ratification process is enormously important.”
And if there is a disconnect between union leaders and their members, he said, that will be put to the test when they stand for re-election.
The bigger question is whether workers will continue to stand their ground if the economy slows and the job market goes into a slump.
For his part, Mr. Stanford remains optimistic. “Workers have a reinvigorated sense of worth after the pandemic and what they went through,” he said. “Workers expectations have been lifted, and that increases the bargaining power of the union itself.”