- 155,000 workers to hit picket lines on Wednesday, union says
- Stakes are high for Trudeau, who’s allied with labor party
According to Bloomberg article published on April 19, 2023, more than 155,000 federal workers in Canada will go on strike after wage talks with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government failed.
The labor disruption is expected to impede government functions including the release of economic data from Statistics Canada, passports and immigration applications. More than 35,000 of the workers are employed by the Canada Revenue Agency, the country’s tax-collection body. However, the government has said it doesn’t plan to extend the May 1 deadline for filing personal income taxes.
Workers will walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. Ottawa time on Wednesday, officials with the Public Service Alliance of Canada told reporters Tuesday night. “We truly hoped we wouldn’t be forced to take strike action, but we’ve exhausted every other avenue to reach a fair contract,” PSAC President Chris Aylward said.
The strike underscores that many workers are driven to recoup purchasing power they lost during the recent period of high inflation. It could even set the tone for wage negotiations by both public- and private-sector unions in the coming months.
PSAC, the largest federal civil-service union in Canada, has been seeking a 13.5% raise over three years for Treasury Board employees — those who do jobs ranging from maintaining federal buildings to inspecting products to handling passport applications. Tax workers are looking for 20.5% over three years, plus an immediate 9% adjustment. The union said it’s received several wage offers but none keep up with inflation.
Annual consumer price gains drifted lower to 4.3% in March, the slowest pace of inflation in nearly two years. The Bank of Canada sees inflation falling to 3% by midyear, but officials have warned that elevated wage growth could make getting it back to the 2% target “more difficult.”
PSAC said this will be the largest strike against any single employer in the country’s history.
The stakes are high for the prime minister, whose government has increased the size of the public service by more than a third since being elected in 2015. A scuffle with federal unions will likely draw the ire of the labor-friendly New Democratic Party, which is supporting Trudeau in a minority parliament, and widespread service disruptions will be unpopular among voters.
Statistics Canada will still release economic data, but the agency won’t hold media lockups during the strike. Retail sales figures for February are due on Friday.
The Bank of Canada isn’t anticipating any significant impact on its operations, spokesman Paul Badertscher said by email Tuesday.
