Cory Morgan: Public Servants’ Strike Puts Trudeau Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Revenue Canada workers form a picket line in Montreal on April 20, 2023, the second day of a strike by over 150,000 PSAC federal employees across the country. Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press

Commentary

The civil service strike by Public Service Alliance of Canada members has put Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a very difficult position. His minority government is dependent upon support from Jagmeet Singh’s NDP, which is by nature a party heavily integrated with organized labour. While Trudeau has been trying to support counter-offers to the union from the Treasury Board of Canada, Singh has been on the picket line with striking workers and is demanding nothing less than a full government capitulation to union demands.

The strain on the NDP/Liberal partnership is growing.

The government and the striking workers appear to be at an impasse, with a wide gap between offers on the table. The Treasury Board is offering a 9 percent wage increase over three years while the union wants 13.5 percent. It gets more complicated as demands from different departments vary. Workers within the Canada Revenue Agency are seeking raises in the range of 22 percent over three years. There will be no single negotiated wage increase that can bring the strike to an end. Negotiations need to be made with several classes of government workers, and that will take time.

Further complicating matters, the demands of civil servants go beyond simple wage increases. There is a demand for a $2.50 per hour wage premium for anybody working past 4 p.m., for example. Standard shifts go until 5 p.m. This demand is just a sneaky way to pack in another wage increase without making the overall base rate demand sound larger. This may sound small, but when applied to hundreds of thousands of workers, these increases add up to some large numbers impacting an already strained public treasury.

Much of the labour unrest comes from a government demand that civil servants return to work in person for a few days per week after they have spent years working from home. Not an unreasonable demand considering the COVID-19 pandemic has ended. Unfortunately, many public service workers are now considering work-from-home models to be a permanent entitlement and want it enshrined in their contracts. This will be a hard sticking point in negotiations.

Trudeau must look at the dollars and cents, and he has to bear public sentiment in mind as the strike wears on.

Sympathy from citizens in the private sector for striking public-sector workers is limited right now, to say the least. Most private-sector workers have had to return to their workplaces in person long ago, and many of them were put completely out of work during the pandemic. People in the private sector are still trying to catch up on bills from lost revenue during lockdowns, while public sector workers who never missed a single paycheque are demanding raises and easier working conditions. It doesn’t resonate well.

Waiting times for immigration processing, passport renewals, or pretty much every other federal government service went out of control during the pandemic and are still unreasonable. It’s tough to believe work-from-home models are efficient and should be maintained now that the pandemic has ended. If the government accepts demands from workers to keep working from home, they will need to hire more workers to make up for the inefficiency.

Another union demand that surely is galling for the government is one calling for taxpayers to pay up to $3 million per year into a “social justice” fund for the union. This fund would be used to promote and lobby for causes that will often be in opposition to the government. What are union dues for if not that?

If negotiations don’t make progress, Trudeau will be faced with two options. He can capitulate to demands or he can invoke back-to-work legislation and force things into arbitration.

If the government is too generous with a settlement, the public will be furious. If public servants are forced back to work, Singh will surely have to end the party agreement with the Liberals. It would take support from the Conservative Party of Canada to pass back-to-work legislation.

Trying to wait out the strike is not an option. People are dependent upon too many government services now on hold, from farmers needing inspections to export their products to people needing passport renewals.

The Trudeau government has some tough decisions to make and they haven’t much time to make them. One choice could lead to the downfall of the government if the NDP no longer will support the Liberals, and the other choice will accelerate the loss of public support the government is already suffering from.

It’s going to take some strong leadership in the Liberal government to get through this challenge. Can they find it?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.