WITH 250 picket lines across the country, 155,000 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada – who have been without a contract for more than two years – are out on strike.
The walkout that began on April 19, the country’s largest strike ever against a sole employer, is a fight against inflation eroding wages into a pay cut.
The bulk of the workers – 120,000 employees of various government departments who answer to the Treasury Board – are asking for an annual 4.5 per cent wage increase retroactive to June 2021, when negotiations with the government began.
The government initially offered them two per cent, which is why many workers on picket lines across the country held placards reading, ‘2% is for milk.’
In the days leading to the strike, the government belatedly came around to the compromise of three per cent, as offered by the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board in February.
But with inflation sitting at 4.3 per cent, after reaching a high of 8.1 per cent in June 2022, the government’s offer amounts to a significant cut.
Workers at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), represented by the PSAC-affiliated Union of Tax Employees (UTE), are asking for a more ambitious 7.5 per cent annual raise.
The government, however, is offering the same three per cent to all federal employees.
The reason UTE is asking for a larger wage increase is the imbalance that exists between its earnings and those of Canada Border Service Agency workers, who serve a similar function in administering excise taxes.
The CRA strikers make an average of Can$40,000 to $65,000 a year, meaning many make below the average Canadian salary of $58,800.
They issue passports, process immigration applications, deliver income support (including the support rushed out at the pandemic’s outset), assist veterans, and work in correctional facilities.
Due to Canada’s Phoenix payroll system, adopted in 2016, some employees were underpaid and forced to take on debt. Meanwhile, others were overpaid and forced to work for free to repay the excess income, even though it wasn’t their fault.
Treasury Board president Mona Fortier says the government can’t ‘write a blank cheque’ for public employees.
But a union contract clearly outlines wage and salary expectations for its duration. These workers are simply striving to prevent the further erosion of their wages through inflation, as well as for a package of other inexpensive demands.
PSAC is not only pushing for a wage increase but also aiming to establish the right for workers, whose jobs can be done remotely, to choose whether they want to continue working remotely or return to the physical workplace.
However, the federal government has argued that the ability to work remotely would ‘severely impact the government’s ability to deliver services to Canadians and would limit its ability to effectively manage employees within the public service.’
‘We’d like the terms of our work to be subject to negotiation, not dictation,’ Keegan Gibson, a strike captain with UTE in Edmonton, said.
PSAC president Chris Aylward said many offices were poorly prepared for workers’ return.
He told Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: ‘We’ve got members that go into the workplace now, there’s no desk, there’s no computer for them to work at. They’re getting back in their cars and driving back home again.’
PSAC is calling for the government to provide workers with ‘ergonomic workstation furniture,’ as well as a computer and monitor, if necessary.
Heather Adair, who works for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in Vancouver, and lives in the suburb of Langley, told online news outlet PressProgress that the three hours she spends commuting to Vancouver every day could be better spent with her family.
‘Not only are they dipping into my pocket, they’re really affecting my work-life balance. A big reason why I joined the government was work-life balance. My family is important,’ she said.
Workers are also demanding enhanced diversity and inclusion efforts in workplaces, including mandatory unconscious-bias training, more support for workers who’ve faced harassment or discrimination, and efforts to have Canada’s diversity reflected in the workforce.
Currently, unconscious-bias training is only mandatory for management, while new employees must take an orientation course ‘which includes diversity and inclusion components,’ according to the Treasury Board.
Other courses on indigenous issues, anti-racism, and how to deal with harassment in the workplace are optional.
A 2020 survey of public sector workers shows that just eight per cent are satisfied with how concerns of racism are addressed in their workplace.
To recruit more indigenous employees, the union is requesting a $1,500 annual bonus for workers who can speak an indigenous language, almost double the $800 bonus for bilingual workers who speak English and French.
PSAC is also asking for indigenous employees who have been employed for at least three months to receive five paid days off annually to engage in traditional practices, such as hunting, fishing, and harvesting.
The provincial government of British Columbia and the territorial government of Nunavut have already offer paid leave for indigenous cultural practices.
Additional enticements are necessary to convince indigenous people to work for the very government that dispossessed them and stole children from families to fill Canada’s residential schools.
A briefing document from PSAC notes that it’s ‘incomprehensible’ that the federal government, with its stated commitment toward reconciliation with indigenous peoples, ‘would not offer a modest financial recognition to those (very few) employees who use their Indigenous language at work in service to Canadians.’
In its most recent budget, the federal government committed to passing anti-strike breaker legislation by the end of the year.
Additionally, companies that want to take advantage of the full subsidies for green energy investments outlined in the budget will have to pay union wages.
But expressing a frustration felt by many public workers, an Edmonton-based Service Canada worker who processes employment insurance and pension payments, Caitlin Fortier, said: ‘They support us when it’s convenient for their messaging purposes, but when it comes time to pull out the cheque book, they’re a little hesitant for some reason.’
The government hasn’t ruled out imposing back-to-work legislation to break the strike, as it has already done twice during its tenure in power — in 2018 to force postal workers back to work, and again in 2021 to force dock workers at the Port of Montreal to end their strike.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has only said PSAC must return to negotiations ‘right now,’ adding that ‘Canadians have every right and expectation to see the services that they expect delivered.’
The government has made an effort to notify CRA workers that they will continue to receive full pay if they cross the picket line. UTE president Marc Brière noted this is a confounding message to hear from a government that promised anti-strike-breaking legislation less than a month ago.
