A Public Service Alliance of Canada member wearing a suit of armour walks the picket line outside the Prime Minister's Office, Thursday, April 27, 2023 in Ottawa. Workers in Canada's largest federal public service union are hitting the picket lines for the 10th day as negotiations between the federal government and union continue. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday the government is making “serious offers” in a bid to bring a strike of its largest public sector union to an end.
More than 100,000 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada walked off the job 10 days ago and while talks have continued on and off since then, there is still no imminent sign of a deal.
Earlier this week PSAC national president Chris Aylward said he wanted Trudeau to get directly involved in the negotiations, which he said have hit an impasse because the government hadn’t budged from its latest wage increase offer of nine per cent over three years.
Trudeau, who was in New York City this week for a trade trip, said he is involved.
“I have been directly and intimately involved in the negotiations, in hearing about what discussions are going on,” he said, responding to a question from a reporter at a news conference.
He said he is confident the strike can be concluded with a negotiated deal. The government could end the strike with back-to-work legislation, but Liberal ministers have refused to even entertain a question about using such a tool.
“I have deep faith in collective bargaining as a process,” Trudeau said. “We know that our negotiators are putting forward serious offers.”
In a tweet Friday morning, Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said both sides were talking at the table.
“The government is committed to negotiating a fair, competitive and reasonable agreement,” she said.
PSAC’s main bargaining unit has been without a contract for two years. The government’s current wage offer would be backdated to 2021, with a 1.5 per cent increase that year, followed by 4.5 per cent raise in 2022 and another of three per cent in 2023.
The union initially asked for 13.5 per cent over the same time frame and while it says it has adjusted that ask, it has not said what the new request is.
In a tweet Friday morning, PSAC said it wants a raise that keeps up with inflation and insists the public sector hasn’t received a raise in line with inflation in more than 15 years.
“Thanks to inflation rising by 11% since 2021, federal public service workers’ wages are worth the same as they were in 2007,” the Twitter statement said.
In downtown Ottawa, the picket lines were a little more sparse on Friday than in recent days, when union members flooded the Parliamentary Precinct in a bid to ramp up the direct impact of the strike.
But a handful of workers in PSAC strike pinneys remained outside the doors of many federal office buildings, limiting entry to one person every five minutes.
The contracts being negotiated at the bargaining table would affect some 155,000 federal workers in total.
Aside from pay, other issues described by the government as sticking points earlier this week include the flexibility to work remotely, the reduction of the government’s use of outside contractors and the implementation of seniority rules in the event of layoffs.
As the strike continues, Canadians are facing a wide range of federal service disruptions, including an inability to process immigration and passport applications.
Those on strike include 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency workers, and some tax services are unavailable as the federal filing deadline looms on Monday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2023.
