Many workers hit the picket line in 2023. These 5 charts help contextualize a year of strikes
In 2023, employees across Canada walked off the job in numbers not seen in years, often spurred by wage increases falling be‐ hind inflation.
Job actions by port work‐ ers in British Columbia, school support staff in Nova Scotia, and federal government workers in several locations in between, have led some com‐ mentators to dub 2023 the year of the strike.
But how has this year compared to past periods of labour unrest? How have wages changed? These five charts help put 2023 in some historical context.
Comparing labour dis‐ ruptions to previous years
The amount of disruption — measured using person-days not worked — reached an 18year high in 2023, with 2.2 mil‐ lion person-days not worked as of Nov. 3, according to data compiled by Statistics Cana‐ da.
While that may seem like a lot, the annual figure has gen‐ erally been declining since the mid-1970s, when it hit 11.5 million. That year, the Canadi‐ an Labour Congress called a general strike amid crushing inflation, rising unemploy‐ ment, and wage controls im‐ posed by Pierre Trudeau's Lib‐ eral government.
Sound familiar? Some ana‐ lysts say it feels a little like 2023 was an economic sequel to 1976. While there was no general strike this year, many federal public servants, some 155,000, hit the picket line in the spring for just under two weeks, making it one of the largest strikes in recent times.
The latest government da‐ ta doesn't include the recent simultaneous job actions in Quebec that will push this year's strike figures even higher. More than 60,000 edu‐ cators in Quebec went on an indefinite strike on Nov. 23. At the same time, the province's largest nurses union, repre‐ senting around 80,000 work‐ ers, also went on a two-day strike. On top of that, around 420,000 front-line public sec‐ tor workers staged a threeday walkout.
Strikes are getting longer
Generally speaking, labour disruptions have become less common — thanks in part to declining union membership.
However, the average length of strikes in Canada has in‐ creased over the decades, government data suggests, with the highest average length logged in 2017 at 112.5 days. That year, the near-19month strike at the ChronicleHerald newspaper in Halifax, which began in 2016, came to a close.
As for this year, many unionized workers have seen their purchasing power de‐ cline and they're looking to make up for lost time, said Jesse Hajer, acting coordi‐ nator of the labour studies program at the University of Manitoba.
"Labour markets have also been tight, giving workers greater bargaining power, making them more willing to go on strike and to stay on strike longer," Hajer said. "Generally, they have been getting results."
How long are contracts getting?
Contract lengths are down from last year, but they're generally much longer than they were in past decades. However, union membership has steadily declined, mean‐ ing these long contracts with increased settlements are ac‐ tually benefiting fewer work‐ ers. In 1977, the average union contract lasted about 20 months; so far this year, the average is up to nearly 36 months.
Generally, longer agree‐ ments favour employers, said Julia Smith, assistant pro‐ fessor of labour studies at the University of Manitoba. "They want as few disruptions as possible."
In late 2022, before the huge government-worker strike this year, the head of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Mark Hancock, suggested shorter contracts should be a tool unions use to protect workers against high inflation.
Wage hikes rising
Data shows the average an‐ nual wage increase among unionized workers has been
on an upswing recently, grow‐ ing from 1.6 per cent in 2020 to 3.7 per cent in 2023. Union workers haven't seen that kind of wage increase since the early 1990s.
That may seem high, Hajer said, but it's not when viewed in the context of the ris‐ ing cost of living. "In 2023 (and 2022) wage adjustments/in‐ creases have been well below the current inflation rate, leading to a fall [in] real wages."
So, are workers getting ahead?
For much of 2020, Canada's wage growth surpassed infla‐ tion, one of several economic anomalies analysts link to the pandemic. However, inflation was lurking just around the corner and for the next two years, consumer purchasing power dwindled.
It wasn't until mid-2023 that average inflation-ad‐ justed wages (also known as "real" wages) for all workers were finally higher than they were in January 2020. How‐ ever, that's largely because of wage growth among nonunionized workers. Unionized workers did see an increase in inflation-adjusted wages this year, but their purchas‐ ing power remains below where it was at the beginning of 2020.
In other words, 2023 may have seen some wins for unionized workers, but data suggests they still have signifi‐ cant ground to make up.
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