Canada: Govt, Union Reaches Tentative Deal to End Public Sector Strike

Facts

• The Canada Revenue Agency on Thursday revealed it has struck a "tentative" deal with the Public Service Alliance of Canada's Union of Taxation Employees, ending a two-week strike of more than 35K workers.¹
• The proposed agreement includes an 11.5% wage increase over four years, retroactive to 2021, and a one-time payment of CA$2.5K (US$1.8K). The deal also requires managers to assess work-from-home requests individually.²
• Given that a 0.5% allowance in the third year has also been enshrined in the deal, the Public Service Alliance of Canada has estimated a "compounded" total wage increase of 12.6% over four years.³
• The announcement comes a day after the union threatened to picket outside the Liberal party's convention in Ottawa on Thursday if the federal government failed to put forward a "fair" agreement.⁴
• After a separate deal was reached on Monday with several bargaining groups, tax agency employees were the remaining holdouts of the walkout that involved over 155K federal government workers, seeking to retrieve inflation-driven wage losses and guarantee the right to work from home.⁵
• The roughly 155K union members are expected to vote on whether or not to accept the deals in the coming weeks, with some bargaining groups already expressing their opposition due to alleged insufficient raise in wages and the absence of remote work provisions in the collective agreements.⁶

Sources: ¹CBC, ²Al Jazeera, ³Reuters, ⁴Global News, ⁵New York Times, and ⁶CP24.

Narratives

• Left narrative, as provided by PressProgress. This walkout — one of the largest in Canadian history — has made it clear that workers can resist and challenge the status quo by joining forces and standing up for each other, instead of just accepting whatever the employer offers. Canada's federal government was forced to raise its original offer, improving wages and working conditions due to the resolute strike action.
• Right narrative, as provided by Ottawa Sun. Government workers have long lost touch with reality, striking for unreasonable demands after working part-time — and remotely for full-time — pay since the outbreak of the pandemic. If they are truly dissatisfied and believe they are being underpaid by the federal government, they should resign and try the private sector.

Predictions

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