Front Burner - What’s at stake in the federal workers’ strike?

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Picket lines have been set up at major government buildings and ministers' offices across the country as more than a hundred thousand public servants go on strike. After nearly two years of bargaining without a contract, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) says Ottawa has failed to propose a reasonable agreement and wage increases that keep apace with inflation. But the government says the union's demands are untenable. Meanwhile, Canadians could see delays in accessing government services as passport office workers, immigration processing staff and most Canada Revenue Agency employees will be off the job in the biggest labour action the federal government has seen in nearly 20 years. Today, J.P. Tasker, a reporter with CBC's parliamentary bureau, walks us through the points of contention, how the government is responding and the possible consequences. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. We deserve a fair contract, and that's why we're all here today. We've been through, we've been working for the pandemic, we've worked for Canadians,

we've worked for the government, and now we need the government to give us a fair contract so that we can support our families and we can pay our bills. We don't want to be out here. The government has forced our hand and this is where we are. So come to the table and bargain fairly. Across the country, at major government buildings and ministers' offices, picket lines have been set up. As more than 100,000 public servants have gone on strike. The first of its kind in nearly 20 years. And our members are prepared to fight for a good, decent, fair collective agreement. So today I've got my colleague in Ottawa, J.P. Tasker, with me to walk us through the impasse

and the impacts of this major labor action. JP, hello. Hey, Jamie. Thanks for having me. Let's start with the basics here. When we say more than 100,000 public servants are on strike, who are we actually talking about? Yeah, so we're talking about, as you say, over 100,000 federal workers in different bargaining units across the federal public service have walked out. They are off the job. It's one of the largest strike actions in Canadian history. You know, a third of the entire public service isn't working right now. A huge portion of the bureaucracy has gone dark, and it's going to have ramifications. There's financial, political, social ramifications, and there's going to be

disruptions to services that are offered by the federal government. A series of ministers were out saying, to Canadians, we know that our strike poses unneeded challenges. We are committed to ensuring that essential services continue to be delivered. That said, after the union's announcements, many of the PSAC's members are away from their job on strike. It is not business as usual. We will not be able to process your passport. We will not be able to go through your taxes right now, even though the tax deadline is looming. So there's a lot on the line right now for Ottawa and the federal government because they really have to get down to the bargaining table and strike some sort of deal with the union if they want to avert serious disruptions to service.

What other impacts on public services are we expecting here? You mentioned taxes, passport offices. Yeah, I mean, like they were clear today, like you will not be able to apply for a passport right now unless it's on humanitarian grounds or if it's an urgent application. Humanitarian and or emergency situations are defined as follows. follows. Passport clients at risk of financial hardship, passport clients who rely on travel as a source of employment and whose income security will be jeopardized without access, passport clients who must travel for medical reasons or who have had a death or illness in the family and whose situation is deemed urgent, and passport clients deemed urgent on compassionate grounds. Taxes, I mentioned, another big issue,

of course, the tax deadline, April 30th for individual tax filers. There's a chance the CRA, the Canada Revenue Agency, might not be able to go through those taxes and get those returns processed, especially if they're done by paper. There's no workers there to literally receive these paper returns and process them. And then immigration is the other issue, Jamie. You know, we have about a million applications for immigration in the pipeline right now. There will not be workers processing those applications right now. All citizenship ceremonies have been canceled. Oh, interesting. I hadn't thought about that. I would imagine some members of the union's work would be considered essential, right? So who's exempted from the strike for that reason?

And what does that look like? Yeah, so the numbers are in flux. That's why we're saying over 100,000 workers are out on the picket line, because there's about 155,000 workers that are in a strike position, but a big chunk of them are considered essential workers. And those are folks that are dealing with things that cannot wait. So under law, under legislation, there are certain things that have to be processed even if there's strike action, things like old age security payments, things like the Canada pension plan, things like issuing a social insurance number to workers. So people who deal with those files, they will show up, they will report to their jobs, even though there is a picket line maybe out front of their regular office. And then let's talk about why the strike is happening now and what kind of deal they're asking for. So obviously one of the big issues is pay.

What are they asking for? So they're asking for 13.5% increase in pay over the next three years. That's across the board. Then there's other smaller bargaining units that are actually asking for more than that, like the people who work for the Canada Revenue Agency. When you add up all of the things that they want, you get to about 22.5% pay increase. And the government has said, nope, not happening, way too high. All the things that we're going to offer you come up to about 9% increase in pay over the next three years. So there's a pretty big gulf between what

the government has on offer, 9%, versus what PSAC wants, which is a minimum of 13.5%, with more for other bargaining units. PSAC is saying, look, all our members are grappling with inflation. There's been a huge increase in the cost of living and pay hasn't kept up. So we want the government to come up with some more generous terms and help our members deal with, you know, the price of everything going up. And the government says we're satisfied with 9%. We think that's a reasonable amount. And they also want to keep things in the fiscally prudent lane. You know, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been clear they kind of want to clamp down on spending after years and years of deficits. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland just tabled her budget a few weeks ago saying they want to kind of rein things in and they don't want to, what they say, is write a blank check for the public service unions and just give away massive pay increases because they say it's not sustainable in this current environment. Okay. And I guess I'll just reiterate, I know you said this already, but that, you know,

the union, their position is that so many of their workers are struggling to make ends meet here. These are not high paid senior executives. The majority of our members are women making between $40,000 and $65,000 a year, not the kind of salaries that can withstand being rolled back. And with inflation, even 3% doesn't get you super far. It's not just about pay hikes though, right? I know that's a big part of it, but there's also stuff about remote work in these negotiations, which is really interesting. And explain that to me. Earlier this year, Mona Fortier, the Treasury Board secretary, who is the minister in charge of the Federal Public Service, said, yep, enough is enough. You have to go back to the office for at least two or three days a week. Well, the public sector unions did not like that.

They did not like being forced back to the office. They were saying, look, we kept everything going. We kept the lights on through the pandemic when most of our people were at home. Why can't we continue to do that? And Mona Fortier has said, we think that, you know, really it is in the public interest and it is to the improvement of services to actually have people working in the office at least a couple days a week. And so that's come up at the bargaining table because PSAC says we want to have telework, as they call it, virtual work, enshrined in the collective bargaining agreement. They want to be able to work from home at least for some portion of the week to be determined through negotiation. And the government has been leery of doing that. They really do not want to set the precedent that public servants can work from home for, you know,

forever. So that is a sticking point. And it's a really interesting part of this discussion, I think, because it brings up other issues too. Like I know part of this discussion is centered around the fact that like so many people that live in Ottawa are public servants and that it has really hollowed out the downtown in ways that even like you don't see in other cities. I work downtown Ottawa and it is the busiest I've seen the downtown core in years today because people were reporting for strike duty. They have to show up for strike duty to get their $75 a day from the union to cover the

pay they lose from not being on the job. Like the Tim Hortons line was the longest I've seen it in three years, you know, because people are actually downtown. They have to be on the picket line. They have to check in with their union stewards to get that $75 in strike pay. So I was speaking to the people at Tim Hortons and they were like, what's going on today? Why is there so many people in the shop? I'll rattle off a few other proposals the union has brought up that seem to be on the table here. Training on unconscious bias, diversity, and inclusion, extra pay for veterans affairs caseworkers, given the demands of their job, working with many, many veterans dealing with mental health issues.

And so overall, what do we know about how the government is responding to these proposals beyond just like the big headline pay raise question? And then I think second, secondary, the work from home question. Those are issues that can be worked out at the bargaining table. That is not what is standing in the way of a deal. What is standing in the way of a deal is pay and the telework. The rest of it, they can come to some sort of conclusion. I don't think that's what's keeping Mona Fortier, the Treasury Board Secretary, up at night. She's not worried about that component of the negotiations. I was listening to her today and, you know, as you mentioned, she said, we will continue to work with the PSAC to reach agreements that are fair and competitive,

but we cannot do that unless the union is prepared to compromise. We cannot write a blank check. She also said that giving in to numerous demands from the union would have, quote, grave repercussions on the government's capacity to provide service to Canadians. What is she talking about there when she says that? Well, I think, you know, there has been the service standard for immigration processing and passport processing and all the other things that the government does on the front line, it hasn't been great over the last number of years, right? Because of COVID disruptions, because there's a number of people working from home, because there is a labor shortage in some aspects of the federal government. So they really are reluctant to kind of give in to PSAC and their demands that people just work at home forever. And so that's really something that is an issue. Whereas PSAC, they're saying, look, this is what

a modern workplace looks like. You shouldn't have to report to your office every day or your cubicle or whatever. You know, you should be able to have that flexibility. If you want to keep some of the good people in the federal government, if you don't want to lose a younger generation of workers, you have to have some flexibility here. You have to allow us to kind of maintain that teleworking scenario. So there's a real ideological dispute, if you will, about the future of work in the federal government and how it will play out in the provision of services in this country. I was listening to the prime minister today. He seemed to walk quite a tightrope. Canadians have a right and deserve to get the services that they need from the federal government.

That's why we need both management and labor to get back to the bargaining table as soon as possible. Which feels like a pretty safe thing to say. soon as possible. Which feels like a pretty safe thing to say. But when push comes to shove here, could you see him taking more drastic measures, even ordering people back to work? Yes, I do. I think it's entirely possible. When this happened at Canada Post, for example, a few years back, the federal government had no qualms about introducing back to work legislation and they legislated them back to work. And that's something that we could see here, although it's only, you know, the first 24 hours of a strike. You know, we're really not at that point. I think that they're going to give it more

time at the bargaining table to try and get to some sort of agreement. But it is entirely possible that it gets to the point where they can't politically stomach more disruptions to services. They've already had so much bad press, right, about passports, immigration and everything. Yeah, we've done so many stories on that and it has not gone over well with the general population. So they don't want to have this play out for weeks on end. So I think it does come to the point, potentially, if there's no deal at the table, where the Liberal government consider that sort of legislation and they will not be able to rely on the NDP. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of that party, has said crystal clear. We will never support back-to-work legislation.

And so that means the Liberal government might have to rely on the Conservatives to maybe support back-to-work legislation in the House and in the Senate. And that's something that could play out. But as it stands right now, the conservatives are not willing to address that question. They don't want to say definitively whether they would support that sort of legislation. They're just saying. The strike that we are witnessing here today is a complete result of the incompetence of the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and his government. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. In preparation for this interview, I was reading about when the public service went on strike in 91. It was under conservative Brian Mulroney, and Mulroney really played a hard ball. He said he wasn't going to, quote, be bamboozled by a

bunch of self-centered, boggy-brained public servants, which is quite a quote. And he passed back to work legislation pretty quickly. But there was obviously a very different political context and labor context. Unemployment was around 10% then, and it's half that now at near record lows. So labor generally does seem to have more leverage at the moment and more of a reason to fight because of the crazy inflationary pressures that regular people are feeling. And I wonder, how do you think that that might impact the government's decision making here? Oh, I think it does. I think you hit the nail on the head. Labor is in its strongest position in a generation, not just in government,

but across the board. Right. And that is why we're seeing an uptick in, you know, union movements and kind of the collective bargaining process has really taken off in certain sectors like Starbucks that were never unionized before, right? In the United States, for example, and other instances here in Canada as well. Unions have more power, more leverage than they've had in a long time. And I think that that's why PSAC, when it came up against that strike deadline, said, you know what, let's roll the dice and let's go for it. Let's see what we can get from this government that has been a friend to labor or tried to present themselves as a friend to labor. They have always been courting union voters, private sector and public sector. They reversed, this Liverpool government reversed a number of changes that were enacted under the former conservative government. That was changes that were designed to curb the collective bargaining

process. And that was one of the first things they did back in 2015. And they have introduced anti-scab legislation. You know, there has been a real effort on the part of this government to try and get those in their electoral column. So they are in a bit of a politically vulnerable spot if they get very heavy handed with PSAC, because obviously there is solidarity in the labor movement. And it's not just one union. They're dealing with the whole movement, you know, and so I think you're going to have to tread carefully. And I imagine that all these other labor unions are looking at what's happening here very closely, right? And there could be real ripple effects here.

You know, I just, to end this conversation, I remember thinking the Ford government in Ontario seemed taken aback by how supportive Ontarians were of striking education workers and how strong the backlash was to Ford's attempt to impose a contract on them. And I know it's really early here, but certainly when we're talking about public opinion, I can see how on the one hand, people feel like, hey, I'm dealing with inflation right now too. And the idea of asking for a more substantial raise to keep up with the cost of living feels relatable or understandable. On the other side of this, I can also see people thinking, like, I want my passport in a reasonable time. So do we have a sense of where the public opinion is here at this time?

at this time? Well, PSAC, they're trying to present their members as people who earn a middle income, that they haven't had a great wage in a long time, and people need to rally behind them and support them and get them the increase that they deserve. I don't know how sympathetic federal public servants are in the general public. I haven't seen polling on that. But, you know, I think people generally find public workers to be well paid. They have great pensions. They've been able to work from home for three years. So I don't know if they have like public opinion on their side. And I think the government is probably hoping that there is actually a backlash. They were out trumpeting the effects on services, the ministers, the government saying, you're not getting your passport. Don't forget, you know, tax returns probably not happening on time.

They were trying to make the case publicly that this could be a problem. And so you can already see them start to lay the groundwork for when they might resort to something like back to work legislation, hoping that the people are behind them and saying, no, we need those passports. So that's where I see this going, them trying to paint the public service as something that is intransigent, a problem, and we need to kind of legislate them back to work and give them a perfectly reasonable offer. That's what they're probably going to say in the days ahead as this potentially stretches on for more time. Yeah, certainly a bit of a tightrope for this government to walk. JP, thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Jamie. Nice to talk to you. All right. That's all for today. I'm JB Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.