The table is set for disruptions this fall in B.C. thanks to many unions that have strike mandates in contract negotiations.
More than 452,000 unionized employees in B.C. are seeking new deals. Those workers include teachers, nurses, social workers, health-care employees, post-secondary staff and others.
Unions are likely to dig in their heels for better contracts because inflation has soared in the past five years and workers’ wages have not kept pace, Independent Contractors and Businesses Association (ICBA) chief economist Jock Finlayson told BIV.
“They’re making more noise,” he said of unions. “That’s not a surprise to me because inflation spikes historically have had similar kinds of effects in injecting turbulence into labour relations.”
The British Columbia General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) and the Professional Employees Association (PEA) in August held votes to get strike mandates. BCGEU workers voted 92.7 per cent in favour of job action if necessary whereas the PEA workers voted 82 per cent of that strike mandate.
Both unions then launched pickets today.
The BCGEU set up pickets in Victoria, Surrey and Prince George as well as in front of the Royal BC Museum. The PEA launched pickets at targeted government ministry locations, including many of the same locations as the BCGEU, PEA communications director Jordana Whetter told BIV Tuesday afternoon.
About 34,000 of the BCGEU’s more than 95,000 members were taking part in the August vote for a strike mandate, said BCGEU president Paul Finch.
They include those at the British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch but also those who fight forest fires, administrative workers and others.
“Wages across society have not adjusted adequately to reflect the change in the cost of everything,” Finch said.
The B.C. government offered the BCGEU a two-year, 3.5 per cent wage increase along with other perks. The BCGEU countered with a two-year, 8.25 per cent offer that included cost-of-living protection in the second year.
Finlayson stressed that the B.C. government’s “cupboard is bare,” so contentious negotiations are likely.
Finch said job action this fall could be wider reaching than in 2022, when the BCGEU last went on strike.
Back then, workers picketed BCLDB warehouses, disrupting alcohol deliveries to stores. Some craft distillers gained business because they were able to sell directly to restaurants and private liquor stores. Wineries, similarly, are also able to sell directly to customers. The hospitality sector as a whole, however, was sent scrambling in 2022, and is bracing for what could come this year.
While forest fire suppression workers could stage job action, Finch said safety would be maintained.
B.C. law allows the province’s labour minister to direct the BC Labour Relations Board to designate minimum levels of service that must be maintained during a strike or lockout when a labour dispute “has the potential to threaten the health, safety, and welfare of British Columbians.”
Bill Tieleman, a former communications director at the BC Federation of Labour, told BIV he expects job action could be significant.
“You can say hospital workers are essential service, and that this limits the amount of job action they can take but [hospital workers’ possible job action would] still have an impact,” he said.
Unions are getting savvy to the impact public opinion could have in putting pressure on the government to offer a better contract, he added.
Tieleman pointed to ad campaigns that the BCGEU, the Health Sciences Association and the BC Teachers’ Federation are already running.
Strikes and threats of strikes have created uncertainty for B.C. businesses and residents this year.
It was not only the Air Canada (TSX:AC) flight attendants’ strike, which the airline estimated inconvenienced more than 500,000 travellers in August.
Workers at LifeLabs Inc. held 10 weeks of rotating strikes until they reached a new contract in April. Rogers Communications Inc. technicians, and Cascade Aerospace workers both went on strike in Abbotsford this summer.
Canada Post workers may go on strike for the second time in a year if bargaining proves fruitless. Hullo Ferries workers voted 91 per cent in favour of job action, the BC Ferry & Marine Workers' Union announced Tuesday afternoon in a press release.
Unions have less sway in economy than decades ago
Despite job actions, unions have less sway in B.C.’s economy than they did decades ago.
Only 30.1 per cent of B.C. workers were unionized in 2024, down from 43.3 per cent in 1981, according to Statistics Canada.
“Across the broad private sector, unionization has gone down very significantly,” Finlayson said.
“In the public sector, unions have become more entrenched.”
Statistics Canada research shows that across Canada, the percentage of workers in private-sector unions has fallen to 15.5 per cent in 2023, from 21.3 per cent in 1997. Meanwhile, public-sector union coverage grew slightly to 76.7 per cent from 74.7 per cent 26 years earlier.
Another potential sign of reduced union power is a willingness by federal governments to force unions and employers into binding arbitration if talks fail to achieve agreements.
Both of Canada’s main federal political parties have used Section 107 of the Canadian Labour Code to send disputes to binding arbitration.
In 2011, Lisa Raitt, then the Conservatives’ labour minister, used it to send Air Canada flight attendants to binding arbitration and back to work after they had twice voted down collective agreements.
Last year, Seamus O’Regan, the Liberals’ then-labour minister, tried unsuccessfully to use that mechanism to stop a strike by WestJet aircraft maintenance workers.
O’Regan’s successor, Steven MacKinnon, used Section 107 in mid-2024 to end a lockout and potential strike by Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. workers.
He also used it to end strikes and lockouts at major Canadian ports and to get Canada Post workers back to work.
Despite less unionization in workforce, unions retain clout
In the latest use of Section 107, on Aug. 16, Minister of Jobs and Families Patty Hajdu directed the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to order Air Canada and its union into binding arbitration less than a day after the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) announced its strike.
Members’ anger about her use of controversial provision spilled over.
Union leaders flouted Hajdu’s order and said that they were not ending their strike. They added that other unions had their backs, hinting that labour unrest could spread to other sectors if workers in other unions acted in solidarity by also stopping work.
“If it means folks like me going to jail, then so be it,” CUPE national president Mark Hancock said at an Aug. 18 news conference.
“If it means our union being fined, then so be it.”
Hours later, his union attended a mediation session that yielded an agreement and ended the strike.
It has been decades since a Canadian union leader was sent to jail for labour activism.
In 1981, Grace Hartman, CUPE’s then-national president was jailed for 45 days after she defied a court order to end an illegal strike by hospital workers.
A year earlier, a court sentenced Jean-Claude Parrot, the national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers at the time, to three months in jail for defying Parliament’s back-to-work legislation.
Finch said the union movement’s resolve is strong even if unions have a smaller presence in the provincial economy.
“The labour movement in B.C. has a long tradition, and you see ebbs and flows of the demonstration of that power,” he said.
“Fundamentally, the power of unions is not rooted in their bureaucracy. It’s rooted in their will—the will of their membership—and their ability to organize to achieve democratic goals.”
