PSAC announces nationwide strike votes set for November

Canada’s largest federal public service union says 120,000 workers will take part in nationwide strike votes starting next month after contract talks with the federal government broke down.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada says voting will take place from Nov. 16 to Jan. 22.

The union and Treasury Board have been in contract negotiations for a year and a half, and PSAC in May called a government wage offer of less than one per cent per year “insulting.”

PSAC says the government has refused to negotiate on key issues such as wages, job security, remote work and protections against artificial intelligence.

“The government has left us no other choice,” said PSAC national president Sharon DeSousa. “This is a wake-up call for the government to stop playing games and put a fair offer on the table.”

Workers to take part in strike votes include wildland firefighters, passport and benefit officers, fishery officers, federal teachers, librarians and administrative staff.

If the vote passes, the union would be in a legal strike position for 60 days. But DeSousa says a strike is the last resort option.

“Our goal is to get a good collective agreement, and it doesn’t have to lead to a strike, but we will if required to do so,” she said.

In 2023, 155,000 federal public servants spent almost two weeks on picket lines across the country before winning wage increases amounting to 12.6 per cent over the agreement’s term, which ran from 2021 to 2024.

Since then, federal public servants have faced both job cuts and an increase in their required office presence.

The Liberals’ 2025 budget outlined a plan to slash the public service by 10 per cent by the end of the 2028-29 fiscal year as part of an effort to reduce spending.

The federal public service has shed more than 23,000 staffers over the last two years, says Canada’s parliamentary spending watchdog.

An online tool released by the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer last month estimates there were 344,970 federal employees in the second quarter of this year, down 6.5 per cent from two years ago.

At the same time, federal government departments and agencies are set to spend more than $18 million to get their employees to work in the office more often.

Thousands of federal public servants started a new work schedule in July requiring them to be on-site in the office four days a week. Executive public servants returned to the office full-time in May.

In response to an order paper question from NDP MP Heather McPherson, 13 federal organizations said they plan to spend a combined $18,720,150 to reconfigure or acquire office space to accommodate the increased frequency of in-person work.