The amount of person-days not worked in Canada surpassed two million in 2023, according to Statistics Canada. This is the highest number of person-days not worked since 2005.
A person-day is a unit of measurement often used in accounting. One person-day is equivalent to one person working one full day shift.
The high amount person-days not worked indicates a high amount of strike activity this year. Many high-profile strikes took place in 2023, including strikes by federal public servants, BC port workers and a common front of public sector workers in Quebec.
Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), said that this year has been pivotal for workers.
“Workers are really fed up with the status quo. We’re hearing about record profits, and we’re really stepping up and demanding better from their employers,” Bruske said.
The memory of pandemic lockdowns in the public consciousness has been a huge factor to the increasing mobilization of workers, Bruske said. Many essential workers, such as workers in grocery stores and retail spaces, were being told that their jobs are important. Workers had begun to realize that their employers should value their labour, Bruske said.
Another factor that has contributed to worker mobilization is the inflation crisis. Bruske said. In 2022, the Consumer Price Index had reached a 40-year high, indicating that common consumer goods had skyrocketed in price.
“Workers are in a mood to fight,” said Stephanie Ross, Director of the School of Labour studies at McMaster University. “[Workers’] expectations are higher. What they need and what they are demanding is more than I think what collectively the labor movement has been demanding. And certainly more than employers have been used to offering.”
Ross said the “fighting mood” of workers is a positive thing because strike actions in Canada had been on the decline in recent years. Declining strike activity may be in part due to workers’ fears, Ross said.
Private sector workers often fear job loss during labour disputes and public sector workers are at risk of being legislated back to work while striking, said Ross.
“A lot of people over the last 20 years, really lost faith in the ability of the strike to deliver the goods and so we see a declining use of the strike,” Ross said. “At the same time, we’ve seen a massive redistribution of wealth at the top of the income scale… The reason why strikes are so important is that they function to put some check on that growth of income inequality.”
A large contributor to increasing militancy and mobilization among workers is the class consciousness of youth, according to Kendra Strauss, Director of the Labour Studies program at Simon Fraser University.
Strauss said that many young people have only experienced labour in the context of great income inequity, which has led to young workers having a strong understanding of the role of workers within a capitalist system.
Young workers have become very aware of the issues with the world they are inheriting, Strauss said, and this has inspired many to begin to struggle for better worker protections. Achieving the labour conditions that many workers are demanding will require major efforts.
“There are going to have to be big investments of time and resources in on-the-ground organizing,” Strauss said. “I think this is where the labor movement more broadly, really needs to take inspiration from young workers who are organizing in their workplaces.”
Despite the long road ahead, many are hopeful about the future of labour and how the momentum built in 2023 will push workers rights forward.
Bea Bruske said the high-profile labour actions taken this year have created an uptick of interest in unionization. Strauss said that it will be hard to measure whether this year’s labour actions have led to an increase in unionization because it takes time to unionize.
“We tend to hear about really iconic successes in union organizing. So here in BC we had Starbucks that organized, we had Sephora in Kelowna that organized,” Strauss said. “But it doesn’t necessarily have a direct and large impact on the numbers of unionized workers right away.”
However union density may change as a result of 2023, Bea Bruske said she feels encouraged by the mobilizations she has seen this year.
“I think we need to recognize that people are exhausted,” Bruske said. “I think we have to give them a message of hope. We have amazing wins that we’ve had earlier this year… We have to pause and reflect on the positives that we’ve accomplished and see here’s what more we can actually accomplish by working together in solidarity.”
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