Earlier this week, the Public Service Alliance of Canada published an update on their website regarding contract negotiations with the federal treasury board.
These negotiations are for about 120,000 federal public service workers employed in programme and administrative services, technical services, and education and library science.
Included in these bargaining groups are wildland firefighters, passport and benefit officers, fishery officers, federal teachers and librarians, and administrative professionals.
PSAC served notice to the Treasury Board in February 2025 to begin negotiations for workers in programme and administrative services, as well as technical services, and the following month for those working in education and library science.
Negotiations began in June 2025, which is when the last collective agreement expired.
After consulting with their fellow workers leading up to negotiations, the bargaining committee determined to prioritize fair compensation, greater job security, safer workplaces, and stronger provisions for remote work.
In 1998, bargaining teams for these workers at the time negotiated job security into their collective agreement, known as the workforce adjustment appendix. Basically, in the event that a position has to be eliminated—due to a lack of work, a discontinuance of a function, a relocation of a work unit in which the employee does not wish to relocate, or an alternative delivery initiative—workers were guaranteed a job offer elsewhere in the federal service.
Last September, the Treasury Board announced that they want to remove these job protections from the collective agreement, which is significant given that 15,000 workers have already received workforce adjustment notices. The federal government could cut a lot of money from the expense column of their budget by not having to pay these workers, in their old (or current) positions or new ones.
About a month and a half later, the workers’ bargaining teams came back to the table with a proposal to not only keep workforce adjustment but to strengthen it by implementing the following:
- Use seniority when selecting workers for retention and lay-off and determining how reasonable job offers are given;
- Avoid contracting out when members can do the work
- Prevent forced relocations
- Increase use of remote work to prevent layoffs
- Raise education allowance from $17,000 to $25,000
- Offer language training
- Improve access to alternation and voluntary departure programs
Workers also proposed at that negotiating session several items on artificial intelligence, surveillance protections, and privacy to ensure the federal civil service does not use these tools as a backdoor for cuts, contracting out, surveillance, or discrimination.
Last December, the workers’ bargaining committee tabled a monetary package that included 4.75% in wage increases for every year of a new 3-year collective agreement.
| 1 July 2025 | 4.75% |
| 1 July 2026 | 4.75% |
| 1 July 2027 | 4.75% |
| 14.25% |
Over the course of their last collective agreement, these workers saw a compounded wage increase of 12.6%.
Keep in mind that the consumer price index in Canada increased 24.2 points, between June 2020 and June 2024, from 137.2 points to 161.4 points. That is a 17.64% increase.
Because these workers saw a wage increase of 12.6% during a period with 17.64% inflation, they ended up with a cut to real wages 5.04% heading into negotiations for the new contract.
The first wage increase of 4.75% they proposed falls short of making up for those lost wages.
In fact, a 5.04% real wage cut erodes the total wage proposal to just a little more than 9%.
On top of that, because the combined wage increase is spread out over 3 years, that means another 3 years of inflation. Inflation since their last wage increase has already hit 5.33%.
When we add that to the 5.04% real wage cut from the last collective agreement, we end up with more than 10% being chopped off the proposed increase, leaving less than 4% to cover inflation for the final year and half of the proposed contract.
That might be enough, but barely.
In contrast, the Treasury Board wants a 4-year contract, with much smaller increases during that period.
| 1 July 2025 | 2.00% |
| 1 July 2026 | 0.50% |
| 1 July 2027 | 0.50% |
| 1 July 2028 | 0.50% |
| 3.50% |
Their total wage proposal for the entire 4 years is less than what the workers are asking for in just their first year.
Proposing 0.5% wage increases for 3 years in a row when inflation has not been below 0.5% since 2009, when it hit 0.3%, is ludicrous.
It works out to an additional $58 per month for the average worker by the end of the proposed agreement. Pathetic.
By the time the two parties finished their bargaining sessions this past January, it became clear that they were not going to progress to a reasonable compromise, and the workers’ bargaining team declared an impasse in February.
The Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board appointed mediators in March, and the two parties were scheduled to begin mediation this past April. However, that ended up being pushed to June, which pretty much went nowhere.
Throughout the summer, the workers’ bargaining team held virtual town halls to discuss the state of negotiations for each bargaining group and what workers could expect going forward.
In August, the workers’s bargaining team agreed to meet with a third-party, outside mediator to resume negotiations. Unfortunately, the employer dragged their heels during the entire mediation.
Tired of the Treasury Board’s “insulting wage proposal, push for concessions, and refusal to address critical workplace issues”, PSAC announced this week that they will be holding strike votes between November and January.
Remember, a strike vote does not mean that workers will automatically or immediately go on strike. If the workers vote in favour of striking—especially if it is a large majority—the bargaining committee can try to use that as leverage to get the employer to meet their demands.
Especially since these workers showed in 2023 that they were actually willing to strike for what they asked for.
