As Canada’s unemployment rate remains at a historic low, experts say the heightened interest in unions among retail and service workers that has emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. 19, will continue, even if it often results in tough battles against big and powerful employers.
The pandemic has been a catalyst for many frontline workers who union organizers say have been spurred to fight for better wages and working conditions in sectors where unionization is uncommon.
“Looking at the general landscape of how the retail and service industry has evolved over the past few years, it’s been an extremely difficult time for workers,” said Kim Novak, president of Local 1518 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, with which a Sephora store unionized last year.
Since 2020, organizing drives have taken place at major retailers including Starbucks, Cineplex, Indigo, Sephora and PetSmart. Last Friday, workers at an Edmonton Starbucks voted to unionize with the United Steelworkers, joining their counterparts in several municipalities in Alberta and British Columbia.
When there aren’t as many potential workers out there, companies have fewer choices when it comes to hiring. According to Nicole Denier, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Alberta who studies labor and labor markets in North America, this situation is favorable to organizing efforts because it puts workers in a better position. of negotiation.
Workers are less fearful of being fired for union activity because they can find another job relatively quickly, economist and labor law expert Jim Stanford observed in an email.
“Once they form a union and start collective bargaining, lower unemployment gives them a bit more bargaining power,” he added.
However, Stanford believes employers are still in a strong position.
“It would be wishful thinking to imagine that a relatively tight labor market alone could bring about a radical change in union organizing trends,” he said.
Union organizers, including Mr.me Novak, say workers are increasingly interested in sectors that for decades have seen low rates of unionization, including retail, restaurants and warehousing. Scott Lunny, Steelworkers director for Western Canada, noted that there were more requests for union membership in 2022 than in 2021 in British Columbia.
But the increase in interest in the union described by organizers is not reflected in Statistics Canada data. Only 12.47% of retail workers were unionized in February 2023, only slightly more than five years earlier.
Even fewer workers are unionized in the accommodation and food service sector, at less than 6%, which is again almost identical to their proportion five years earlier.
Mr. Stanford explained in an interview that it sometimes takes time for new labor campaigns to show up in Statistics Canada figures, since data on unionized workplaces is usually based on collective agreements, which can put long time to be consolidated after a successful trade union campaign.
The lag also gives companies time to try to weaken union support, Stanford said.
Disadvantaged chain workers
But that’s not the only hurdle workers face, he added.
Currently, unionized establishments in chain stores are in the minority compared to their non-unionized counterparts. For example, Starbucks had nearly 950 company-operated stores in Canada as of October 2, 2022, while Indigo had 173 as of April 2, 2022.
Because unionization normally involves only one physical workplace at a time, chain workers are at a disadvantage, Mr Lunny argued, although some stores have been able to bargain as a unit with others. stores located in the same geographical area.
One change that would make a big difference, Stanford said, would be for workers to be able to bargain in larger groups, like construction workers, who are unionized by trade and geographic area rather than by workplace. individual.
Some changes are already underway. For example, last year in British Columbia a one-step certification process was implemented. It makes it easier and faster to unionize companies and, in its annual report, the BC Labor Board credits this change with an increase in requests for certification. In February, a fourth Starbucks store in British Columbia joined the United Steelworkers as part of this new process.
Mme Novak thinks the workers have gained enough momentum to make a long-term change.
“It’s the slow march of worker mobilization,” she said. It starts with campaigns that don’t necessarily make a difference in national unionization percentages. »
She says she’s confident that as more workplaces unionize and workers across the country closely monitor changes in collective agreements, “we’ll see those percentages start to go up.”
In the meantime, a single collective agreement could benefit workers across the country.
That’s what happened with the only unionized Sephora store in North America, in Kamloops, BC, where workers won a policy in their collective agreement that the retailer adopted nationally.
Mr Lunny believes that the way workers perceive their own worth has changed. “They hear a lot of talk and don’t see a lot of action,” he concluded.