As Canadians continue to grapple with the specter of lingering inflation, unions across the country have begun winning higher-than-average wage increases for workers in recent months, a Globe and Mail analysis of internal union data and publicly reported data shows. available data. After a two-year delay in negotiating new and renewed collective agreements due to COVID-19, thousands of bargaining units across the country – in the private and public sectors – are now in discussions with employers or will begin talks by the end of the year. And there are early signs that unions have secured some significant gains in wages, posting their biggest increases in years. In Ontario, according to data from the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, 650 collective agreements have been ratified by union members so far in 2022. The average annual wage increase in these settlements (which include bargaining units with 150 or more members) is already at 2.8 percent. In 2021, the same figure was 1.2 percent and in 2020 it was 1.4 percent. Over 2,000 settlements were ratified in both of these years. More specifically, unionized private sector workers in Ontario (in bargaining units with 150 or more people) have seen an average annual wage increase of 4.1 per cent in 2022, according to the data. This percentage did not exceed 3 percent in the last decade. A primary factor for larger increases was settlements in the construction trade sector. Electricians represented by the International Construction Council of Electrical Workers of Ontario, for example, won an 8.6 per cent wage increase over three years. The Iron Workers union in Ontario negotiated a 9 per cent raise over three years, with a 0.5 per cent premium for Toronto workers in the third year of their contract. “Bargaining is a long, sometimes years-long process, but we’ve seen some huge successes in the private and public sectors lately,” said Mark Hancock, the national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the country’s largest union, which represents 700,000 public sector workers. “A pattern has been established to achieve wage increases that keep pace with high inflation, and that will have a positive impact on future negotiations,” he told The Globe. The federal government’s most up-to-date data on union-employer settlements across the country show that in March, April and June 2022, average wage increases exceeded 2.5 percent for unionized workers in bargaining units with 500 or more employees. Such large increases in negotiated wages over three months have not been seen in more than a decade. Economists and union researchers warn that official government figures may not paint the full picture of wage increases, in part because of delays in gathering and reporting information from new and renewed collective agreements. But they agree that there are some signs that wages are rising more than they have in decades, and the trend will continue. “We’ve seen unions secure some big wage increases in new contracts. But it will take time for the current rise in inflation to be fully reflected in union wage negotiations,” said Jim Stanford, a veteran labor economist and director of the Vancouver-based Center for the Future of Work. “Even if inflation eases next year, which is likely, wage talks will still be affected for at least another two to three years because workers who didn’t have a chance to bargain this year will still want compensation. for a loss of purchasing power that they experienced,” Mr. Stanford added. This week, the BC Union of General Employees negotiated a historic double-digit pay increase of about 14 per cent over three years for 33,000 striking public sector workers. The union had rejected an 11 per cent offer from the provincial government, saying it failed to recognize the true cost of inflation, which is currently running at a four-decade high annual rate of 7.6 per cent nationally. The agreement follows a similar agreement reached between British Columbia and 60,000 hospital workers through the Hospital Employees Union, an affiliate of CUPE, last week. Hospital workers will see their wages increase by 25 cents an hour plus 3.24 percent in 2022 and by 5.5 percent to 6.7 percent in 2023. CUPE has almost 4,000 bargaining units across the country: 1,966 are currently in negotiations and 358 are expected to begin negotiations before the end of the year. In 2020, according to data obtained by the union, the average wage increase was about 1.62 percent. In 2021, that number was 1.61 percent. Mr. Hancock expects the 2022 number to be significantly higher, even just based on the association’s recent wins in B.C. “There are 300,000 public sector workers in BC whose agreements need to be negotiated, including nurses, teachers and social security workers. I bet these other deals will come quickly and will be very similar to what BCGEU secured,” the union leader said. The Canadian Alliance of Public Services, which represents 230,000 public sector workers, currently has five of its eight bargaining groups (representing about 130,000 employees) deadlocked with the federal government over wages, according to the union’s president Chris Aylward. “Union negotiated wage increases always keep pace with inflation, but inflation has never been this high in a long time. So we hope to secure significant wage increases, and if not, we are ready to take the necessary steps,” he told The Globe. Other examples of outsized wage increases negotiated by private sector unions this year include hundreds of full-time Sobeys warehouse workers in Ontario represented by Unifor, which won a 19.5 percent wage increase over four years and a 13 to 17 percent increase in wages over three years for the newly formed unionized workers of WestJet Airlines Ltd. in Calgary and Vancouver. However, the prospect of more workers receiving higher wages has some economists and the Bank of Canada worried about the phenomenon of a wage-price spiral, where wages and prices push each other higher, creating even more inflation. “We’re seeing early signs that wage settlements are coming in higher than we’re used to. There is evidence on the ground now,” said Robert Kavcic, an economist at the Bank of Montreal. “So if you’re a business and you’ve agreed to raise wages at a much higher rate than usual, it’s likely going to affect your pricing.” Mr. Cavcic also noted that because many businesses across the country are still struggling with labor shortages, they are not in a particularly strong bargaining position. “They don’t have much choice right now but to allow wage increases,” he said. The latest data from Statistics Canada shows that average hourly wages are rising. Wages for union and nonunion workers rose 5.4 percent year over year to $31.33 in August, compared with 5.2 percent in June and July. Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labor Congress — which publicly criticized Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem for telling businesses to hold back on wage increases amid the specter of a wage-price spiral — told The Globe that wage increases are still nowhere near what they should be, and he dismissed the idea of a wage-price spiral. “It’s really disgusting to hear some people blame the worker. Why aren’t we hearing dire warnings from Bay Street about the dangers of an ‘earnings-price spiral’?” she said, referring to the debate among economists over whether record corporate profits over the past two years have driven inflation. Ms Bruske noted that although unions have made notable gains in recent negotiations, many public sector workers – for example in Ontario and Manitoba – are still subject to wage suppression legislation. Bill 124 in Ontario caps annual salary increases for a wide range of public servants at 1 per cent and is currently being challenged in court. “While I am cautiously optimistic about the victories I see, we have many challenges ahead,” she said. “I’m concerned that if public sector unions are hamstrung or if we continue to see regressive legislation that holds workers back, the small window of opportunity we have right now to fight for higher wages will be lost.”
