Collective Bargaining Rights Are Being Undermined Across Canada

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A group of 70 labour scholars from universities across Canada are sounding the alarm about growing attacks on workers’ rights.

In an opinion article published on July 9 in English in The Globe and Mail and in French in La Presse, the authors write that governments and employers are engaged in a co-ordinated effort to weaken unions at precisely the moment they are beginning to regain strength after decades of decline.

The authors warn that rather than strengthening the institutions that allow workers to bargain collectively, governments are restricting strikes, expanding pro-employer state intervention and limiting union power in the name of economic competitiveness.

“We need stronger unions and more worker participation in them – not more restrictions,” they argue, pointing out that recent legislative initiatives across the country threaten not only organized labour, but the broader democratic principle that workers should be able to act collectively to improve their wages and working conditions.

The full list of signatories to the open letter includes experts from a range of disciplines and can be viewed on the website of the Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies (CAWLS). (Full disclosure: I’m an executive member of CAWLS and a signatory to the letter.)

The article reflects a growing concern that attacks on collective bargaining rights are no longer isolated to particular disputes but are part of a broader and regressive national trend.

Thomas Collombat, a professor in the department of social sciences at Université du Québec en Outaouais and one of the experts who initiated the letter, told Class Struggle that this generalized attack on union rights emerged as a key theme at this summer’s CAWLS conference.

“The idea for this op-ed was born in part from a panel at this year’s CAWLS conference in Winnipeg,” Collombat explained. “Panelists from across the country showed how generalized the legislative attacks against unions currently are in Canada, at both the federal and provincial levels. When a province like Quebec, known for its relatively labour-friendly laws, adopts some of the harshest anti-union legislation, labour studies scholars have a responsibility to react and contribute to the public debate on these issues from their perspective as academics and researchers.”

The scholars’ intervention arrives amid one of the most significant periods of labour law reform in decades, as governments across jurisdictions aim to weaken workers’ rights.

In Quebec, the Coalition Avenir Québec government has moved aggressively to reshape labour relations. Bill 89 (now Law 14) dramatically expands the provincial government’s ability to suspend strikes and lockouts whenever they are deemed to impact the “well-being of the population.”

We’ve already seen employers make use of the new law. For example, a strike of daycare workers was undermined when the employer used the law to compel essential services.

Labour organizations have argued that Bill 89 gives the government sweeping discretionary powers that undermine the constitutional right to strike and have mounted legal challenges at various levels.

The op-ed also points to Bill 89 as part of a broader pattern in which governments invoke economic disruption, public inconvenience or business competitiveness to justify limiting collective bargaining rights.

Labour experts reject this logic, arguing that strikes are not failures of collective bargaining but an essential component of it. Without a meaningful ability to withdraw their labour, workers have little leverage to negotiate improvements with employers or governments.

The Quebec government has also introduced Bill 3 (now called Law 4) ostensibly as a response to concerns about union governance and financial transparency — a concern apparently shared by some commentators, despite there being no evidence that this is a widespread problem. While Bill 3/Law 4 has been presented as promoting accountability, critics, including the authors of the op-ed, argue that it imposes new bureaucratic burdens on unions while doing little to strengthen internal democracy.

Barry Eidlin, associate professor of sociology at McGill University and another of the initiators of the op-ed, told Class Struggle that the Quebec government’s priorities reveal its true objectives.

“Union corruption certainly exists, and in cases like we saw recently with the carpenters union in Ontario it has to be dealt with,” Eidlin said. “The problem is that we often see concerns about union corruption raised in bad faith as a means to impose restrictions on unions.”

Eidlin argues that decades of research point toward a different solution.

“One of the key findings from my own research is that the best way to prevent union corruption is to increase member democracy, not impose bureaucratic restrictions. The fact that the proposed remedies we’ve seen recently, like Bill 3/Law 4 in Quebec, focus far more on restricting unions than promoting member democracy suggests that the goal is more about weakening labour at a moment where its fortunes are reviving than actually doing something about union corruption.”

The op-ed also directs considerable attention toward Ottawa and its recent moves to curtail labour power.

Although the federal Liberal government has frequently portrayed itself as pro-labour, offering as examples its passage of anti-scab legislation and other reforms, it is simultaneously considering significant changes to the Canada Labour Code that many unions fear could make strikes more difficult or expand government overreach.

An ongoing consultation process includes proposals related to bargaining timelines, strike mandates, expedited arbitration and, perhaps more controversially, the government’s powers under section 107 of the Canada Labour Code. The second phase of this consultation process launched this month specifically asks stakeholders whether additional principles should govern — or justify — the use of section 107 in the name of protecting the broader “public interest.”

For unions, those questions raise alarm bells.

The federal government has repeatedly used section 107 to terminate or significantly limit strikes in federally regulated industries. While ministers describe the power as an exceptional measure intended to preserve industrial peace, organized labour contends that its repeated use encourages employers to hold out during negotiations in the expectation that government intervention will eventually deliver a more favourable outcome — a point made by labour experts in the op-ed as well.

Eidlin believes this debate has become dangerously one sided.

“We felt it was important to intervene now in the public debate around the right to strike because it’s clear that there is a concerted effort on the part of governments and employers to undermine this fundamental right,” he told Class Struggle.

“I was invited to testify before the Senate when they were preparing the report they recently issued, but I was one of the only witnesses who focused on the constitutional issues at stake, as well as the essential role that the right to strike plays in a functioning system of collective bargaining. All the other witnesses were employer representatives who raised standard talking points about the economic impact of strikes and their ostensible effect on our reliability as a global trading partner. It’s clear which voices mattered more to the report’s authors.”

That criticism echoes one of the central themes raised in the op-ed. Rather than treating strikes as a matter of workers exercising a constitutionally protected right, governments are increasingly framing them as economic disruptions to be managed or prevented.

The labour experts argue that this reverses the logic underpinning Canadian labour law since the Second World War. Collective bargaining has never promised industrial peace through the elimination of conflict. Instead, it channels class conflict into a legal framework where workers possess sufficient power to negotiate on a more equal footing with employers. Remove the credible threat of a strike, they contend, and collective bargaining becomes little more than consultation.

The legislative targeting of organized labour comes at a time when unions have begun to show signs of renewed confidence. Strikes have remained elevated post-pandemic. Organizing victories have occurred in logistics and warehousing. Yet employers have simultaneously intensified lobbying efforts to limit strikes, shorten disputes and expand compulsory arbitration.

The op-ed’s authors warn against the consequences if such changes are enacted.

Strong unions remain indispensable institutions in an increasingly unequal society. Higher union density continues to be associated with higher wages, safer workplaces, reduced income inequality and stronger democratic participation more broadly — benefits that extend well beyond union members themselves.

The labour experts’ intervention is therefore more than a critique of individual pieces of legislation: it’s a call to action.

Canada is entering a period where many governments celebrate workers rhetorically while steadily narrowing the tools available to exercise actual power. Fighting back against this trend is a pressing political task.

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