Labour disputes keep making headlines, from airlines to the oil sands, education to Amazon. Record inflation and wages seem to dominate these conflicts, but there are other pandemic-driven concerns, like remote work, also on the negotiating table. These issues came up during Canada’s largest public sector strike. After nearly two weeks of protests, the historic walkout ended on May 1, when the government reached tentative agreements with the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union representing the more than 120,000 civil servants striking across the country. As negotiations wrapped up, some noted that something felt different: “I can’t think of a time in the last 20 years when all the major federal political parties were less inclined to have a racket with PSAC and more inclined to find a way to appease them,” wrote Tim Powers for the Hill Times.
We asked Kendra Strauss, director of the labour studies program and the Morgan Centre for Labour Research at Simon Fraser University, what this moment of unrest means.
