With contract negotiations at an impasse and a resolution unlikely before tomorrow evening, more than 100,000 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) are set to strike beginning Wednesday, April 19.
These are workers from across the public service; cleaners and cooks on military bases, clerks and maintenance workers, tradespeople, Coast Guard search and rescue teams, teachers, firefighters, and workers who process employment insurance, passport applications and immigration documents. In essence, without these workers, Canada does not work.
The employer, the Treasury Board of Canada, has yet to come up with offers that are suitable to the union’s demands. PSAC wants wage increases that keep up with inflation, increased job security, an end to systemic racism in the workplace, enshrining work from home, and no more contracting out and privatizing of public service work.
The PSAC Strike and CUPW
Why should CUPW members care?
The federal government is Canada’s largest employer, with more than 330,000 employees. The standards set at the federal level are a gravitational field that lift or drop the offers of every other employer in the country.
Since the pandemic, wages have not kept pace with inflation, and the only sectors seeing real wage growth are retail and food services, almost entirely low paying and non-union jobs. With 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency employees also ready to strike as tax filings are due, the time is ripe to pressure the feds and for workers to make real gains.
What Can you Do?
What happens with this strike will set a precedent for other federal workers, including us at CUPW. Stand in solidarity with striking PSAC workers and show support by showing up to a picket line. Use the map in the link below to find one nearest you (note that you cannot attend picket lines during your work hours).https://workerscantwait.ca/
In Solidarity,
Roland Schmidt
3rd National Vice-President
Ryan Lum
Union Representative, External Organizing
2019 – 2023 / Bulletin no 450
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