Union wage settlements in Ontario in 2022 is a good snapshot of how the labour movement in Ontario is divided between public and private sector, and directly reflects where resistance is bubbling and where it is not.
2022 average union wage settlements:
- Provincial avg: 2.4%
- Private sector avg: 3.9%
- Public sector avg: 1.6%
Quarterly averages in the public sector have not topped 2% - while private sector unions reached 4.2% in 2022's 2nd quarter.
Private sector workers in food processing, manufacturing, and logistics fought back as inflation mounted rapidly. Pent-up frustrations from working through the first two years of the pandemic were also expressed in the mini-strike wave in Ontario.
Meanwhile, the public sector unions in Ontario had already rolled over before the pandemic when Bill 124 took 5 months before becoming law in November 2019. The public sector unions proved unwilling and frankly incapable of mounting any serious workplace resistance against rapidly deterioration of conditions under the pandemic. Critical sectors like healthcare and municipal services are under a severe privatization assault amidst austerity and significant inflation wage cuts.
The Ontario education workers' struggle last fall was all the more spectacular because it was so exceptional to the several years of public sector surrender.
Inspiration for the defiant OSBCU strikes was drawn from the New Brunswick CUPE rebellion in 2021. It is worth noting that both the Ontario and New Brunswick CUPE battles have important organizational parallels with the one-day Alberta healthcare wildcat by AUPE members in October 2020...a discussion for another time.
In lieu of coordinated job action against collapsing conditions, the strategy of Ontario public sector unions has been electoral (vote NDP in 2022) and legal (bankrolling law firms to fight Bill 124).
The electoral strategy was a goddam disaster - and there has been no accounting for that in any way.
The tentative repeal of Bill 124 in the courts is a pyrrhic victory. The prospect of a lump-sum retroactive payment is chump change for the total lack of power arrayed against the Ford government (with that one critical exception).
Perhaps the most ridiculous and shameful example of the division between the public and private sector unions was on display when 40,000 trades workers were on strike during most of the Ontario election.
Somehow this massive strike never figured into the NDP or OFL strategy while Ford was making incursions into the skilled and building trades unions, including LiUNA, which is an CLC/OFL member.
Ford had also been having a love affair with Jerry Dias who was happy to Ford's billions in handouts to EV corporations.
The fact is the OFL is under the thrall of public sector unions with the acquiesence of the CIO-derived private sector Steelworkers and UFCW. But Unifor is no longer in the OFL playing the powerful wildcard. The skilled trades unions left the CLC and OFL in 1980. Teamsters are also out of the OFL.
(As for the election results, Ford was re-elected and lost 400,000 votes. The OFL put all its chips on the NDP. The NDP suffered a catastrophic collapse in votes - 800,000. Ford gained 16 seats, the NDP lost 7. It was a walloping.)
The whole month of May 2022 - with a major election underway alongside a big series of province-wide strikes - was like living in fucking bizarro world.
Can this change in 2023? I don't know. Either way, the work ahead of us is massive if we're going to rebuild labour from the bottom up.
It helps that some of the corruption at the top has been exposed, but the OPSEU affair is not over and the Unifor scandal was effectively buried. Corruption at the top of other major Ontario unions has yet to be exposed, but it will most likely come to light in the coming year or two.
We are back to barebones basics in rebuilding labour and rebuilding solidarity. A focus for now is: rebuild local union and labour council capacities through IN-PERSON local education, training, and actions.