In the three years since the last convention, Steelworkers in Canada have worked hard to negotiate industry-leading collective agreements, improve health and safety on the job, and enhance pensions and retirement security. We improved wages and workplace language, strengthened our commitment to gender equity, supported racial justice, advanced our commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous Steelworkers and communities, advocated for worker-centred economic climate transition measures, and improved rights for our 2SLGBTQIA+ members.
As Steelworkers, we have been able to make impressive gains through raising expectations of members and those around us – in turn, our members have pushed the union to demand more from employers, through majority strike votes, strong member engagement and renewed militancy. Combined with a period of low unemployment where employers have been challenged to hire and retain skilled, dedicated staff, USW elected bargaining committees have been winning some of the best contracts seen in decades.
Our union in Canada is strong and diverse across geography, workplaces, sectors and demographics.
While this is excellent news for workers in some cases, what should be a time of renewed prosperity has been hampered by an ongoing cost-of-living crisis coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the country, grocery prices and housing costs have skyrocketed, brought on by pure and unregulated corporate greed. While inflation is decreasing, prices have stayed high.
The reality of industrial and public sector wages not keeping pace with inflation over the last four decades, pushed down by unfair trade, insolvencies, dropping union density and deregulation, has meant that with recent and current extraordinarily high inflation, workers have been squeezed and are saying they have had enough.
On the legislative front, our union has also worked hard to advance workers’ rights and win worker-friendly governments. Since the last convention, the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) made important legislative gains working with the labour movement, including the USW, via the supply and confidence agreement, signed with the governing Liberals. In June 2024, federal anti-scab legislation was signed into law, which will come into effect in June 2025, banning federally regulated employers from using replacement workers in the case of a labour dispute. This will help approximately 1 million federally regulated workers, including 80,000 Steelworkers.
The USW won protection for workers’ pensions, through the passage of Bill C-228. This will require insolvent employers to pay defined benefit pension plan entitlements before claims by secured lenders, such as banks.
Through this supply-and-confidence agreement, our society is achieving a national affordable child-care plan, a dental-care plan for lower-income people, children and seniors, as well as the framework for a national pharmacare plan – which will help reduce unaffordable prescription costs.
The union also worked hard to elect an NDP provincial government in Manitoba, electing into office the first-ever Indigenous premier in the province – Wab Kinew. Premier Kinew has since introduced several worker-friendly laws and increased the minimum wage. In British Columbia, the union worked steadily to return the BC NDP to government after two relatively successful terms. In Saskatchewan, while the NDP was not successful in forming government, it succeeded in winning more seats and hopefully setting the stage for a later win.
Other provinces have had and currently have more challenging political climates, with anti-worker governments taking hold and being handily reelected, such as in Quebec with the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) and in Ontario with the Progressive Conservatives (not progressive!). On the federal stage, former Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, had just stepped down at the time of writing, following calls from within his party and across the aisle for him to resign. The union expects and is preparing for a spring federal election where we will work to support NDP incumbents and candidates in many parts of the country and hold back the Conservative Party of Canada with best efforts.
The recent U.S. presidential election has also cast a pall of uncertainty over trade and the North American supply chain and Canada’s role within it. At the time of writing, Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs had not yet taken effect, but these threats and other punitive measures will have dire impacts on Canada and Canadian workers, including USW members.
Trump threatens to undo advancements in areas of trade, investment, more worker-friendly labour laws, action on climate change, gender and racial justice, Indigenous reconciliation and rights for 2SLGBTQIA+ community members with repercussions felt on this side of the border. Unity between Canadian and American Steelworkers will be key to our shared success as we work to secure jobs, our union and our rights on both sides of the border.
We are proud of our union and what we can accomplish together. In the last three years, this has meant:
- Growing militancy when it comes to bargaining new contracts, winning some of the highest wage increases in recent memory, as well as co-ordinating across locals and districts, like in the security screening sector – see the section Bargaining industry-leading agreements.
- Winning tariffs on aluminium, steel and electric vehicle imports from China, to help support good quality, lower- emissions jobs here in Canada – see the section Green jobs agenda.
- Taking action on equality, including working on Indigenous issues locally and nationally – see the section Action on equality.
- Building up the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA), with 41 Canadian civil society member organizations to advocate for laws and regulations to end human rights and environmental abuses in the global operations and supply chains of Canadian companies – see the section Global partners.
- Challenging employers to meet pay equity legislation, pushing to correct historic inequities in federal sector bargaining units – see the section Defending and advancing the interests of our members.
- Growing the Family and Community Education Fund (FCEF) so that it functions as a major and important resource for local unions wanting to strengthen their union through educational opportunities and community outreach – see the section Family and Community Education Fund.
Steelworkers in Canada are forward-looking and hopeful. The union will continue to provide the strong leadership and progressive activism needed to confront the challenges ahead, regardless of who is in government. We will press forward with a workers’ agenda. The union will continue to stand up for members, Steelworker communities and all working people to build a better future.