120,000 Canadian Workers Vote on Striking — While Ottawa Plans 38,000 Fewer of Them

About $58 a month. That’s what the Treasury Board’s April wage offer works out to, per the Public Service Alliance of Canada — less than 1% a year, and the reason 120,000 federal workers will vote from Nov. 16 through Jan. 22 on whether to strike.

September’s inflation reading was 3.1%. Against it, the offer is a pay cut of more than two points a year, every year of the agreement. PSAC says its members also face demands to take workforce adjustment and dental care out of collective bargaining entirely, and to accept a longer span of hours in which a normal workday can be scheduled.

The groups voting are the Program and Administrative Services, Technical Services, and Education and Library Science bargaining units: wildland firefighters, passport and benefit officers, fishery officers, federal teachers, librarians, administrative staff. “A strike is always our last resort,” national president Sharon DeSousa said.

Budget 2025 projects the federal public service falling to roughly 330,000 by the end of fiscal 2028-29, down from nearly 368,000 in fiscal 2023-24. That is 38,000 fewer jobs, about one in ten, disappearing through attrition and earlier savings measures. The union is bargaining over wages while the employer is planning, on paper, for a smaller workforce.

PSAC says more than 165,000 federal workers are now at impasse, including 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency employees whose strike votes were called separately. Mediation has already run for two of the three groups, on Sept. 29-30 and Oct. 8-9. The third round, for the Technical Services group, is scheduled for Oct. 24-25.

A bargaining agent can authorize or declare a strike within 60 days of a vote carried by a majority of those who vote, subject to the usual statutory conditions. No strike date has been set. Voting-session details go out Oct. 28.

The next date that matters is Oct. 24, when the last mediation round begins.