Skip to main content

Union membership in Canada increases (despite claims otherwise)

The Globe and Mail (regurgitating in today's print edition claims from the Canadian Press) gets it wrong in a story about the labour movement and the new private sector union, UNIFOR.  They claim that "Union membership has declined in Canada in recent years".  In fact, as the easily available Statistics Canada chart copied below shows, union coverage has grown by 164,000 employees from 2008 to 2012, growing in 3 out of the last 4 years.

Union coverage
(Thousands)
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Total employees, covered and not covered by union
Total employees, all industries 
14,464.30
14,124.40
14,371.20
14,635.80
14,841.10
Public sector
3,412.10
3,415.00
3,511.10
3,563.00
3,600.80
Private sector
11,052.20
10,709.40
10,860.20
11,072.70
11,240.30
Union coverage
Total employees, all industries
4,512.80
4,444.40
4,532.60
4,562.20
4,676.80
Public sector
2,530.50
2,541.40
2,629.90
2,638.60
2,684.20
Private sector
1,982.30
1,903.00
1,902.70
1,923.60
1,992.60
No union coverage
Total employees, all industries 
9,951.50
9,680.10
9,838.60
10,073.60
10,164.30
Public sector
881.6
873.6
881.2
924.4
916.6
Private sector
9,069.90
8,806.50
8,957.50
9,149.20
9,247.70

Stats Can CANSIM Chart 282-0078

Despite the recession, even private sector unionism grew by 10,300.

 As a percentage of the workforce, union coverage has increased very slightly, from 31.2% in 2008 to 31.5% in 2012.

 The media outlets also exaggerate the dominance of public sector unionization, claiming that "The public sector makes up the vast majority of union employees."  In fact public sector union membership made up 57% of union membership in 2012 with the private sector comprising 43%.

 "Vast majority"? Hardly.

Perhaps they meant to point out the major difference in union density between public and private sector unionism  - that, at least, would be true (a much higher percentage of public sector workers are unionized compared to the percentage of private sector workers).   

 Certainly it is true that bringing  private sector union density back to former levels is important for labour (and public sector workers have almost as much stake in that project as private sector workers). But the Globe and CP claim is quite misleading. 

 Is it too much to ask the corporate-owned media to get the basics about unionism right?

 Happy Labour Day and congratulations to UNIFOR for their founding convention.

Photo: Welcome to the new, large private sector union, UNIFOR, which was founded over the Labour Day weekend through the merger of CEP and CAW. Logo courtesy of nouveausyndicatdirect.ca




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Huge cuts in public sector wages predicted

The Ontario Financial Accountability Office (FAO)   says  that, with inflation, real wages in the public sector will decline 11.3% over the three year period  2021/2 - 2023/4 .  This would radically deepen the trend towards lower wages during the last ten years.   The FAO reports that since 2011, the average annual salary for the Ontario public sector employees (defined here as employees of schools, colleges, provincial government, provincial agencies, and hospitals) has increased by $10,385   -- or 1.6 per cent on average annually.  This is the lowest increase of all the sectors and lower than inflation, which averaged 1.8 per cent per year. Over the ten years that would be about a 2% pay cut.   The FAO reports that wage settlements were the lowest in the provincial public sector over the last decade:   Hospital Wages Especially Challenged: The FAO predicts hospital wages will increase even less than in the public sector  -- just ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Too many public sector workers in Ontario?

Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately.  In fact, since 1976, the number of public sector employees has not quite kept pace with the population. In 1976, the number of public sector employees in Ontario  as reported by Statistics Canada averaged 830,800.  By 2012, the number had increased to 1,330,700 -- a 60.2% increase.  That sounds like significant growth -- true. But the population has increased  from 8,413,779 in 1976 to 13,505,900 in 2012, a 60.5% increase.   In other words, population growth has run slightly ahead of the growth in public sector employment.     In 1976, close to 10% of the population worked in the public sector.  It stayed pretty much this way until the Mike Harris government came to power when it dipped below 9%.  It returned close to the historical range in the last six years or so, declining in 2012 to below the 1976 averag...
16 comments
Read more

Are health care administrative expenses out of control in Ontario?

The Progressive Conservative government has justified its health restructuring plans with the claim that administrative expenses are much higher in Ontario than in Canada.  When introducing the reforms, health minister Christine Elliott  claimed , “Over the last five years, Ontario has spent 30% more than the Canadian average in administrative expenses on its health care system.”   Elliott did not indicate her source of information. Presumably, however, the Progressive Conservatives are referring to the CIHI simplified and user friendly “ Your Health System ” graphs. Those graphs show “administrative expenses” in Ontario at 5.8% in Ontario while it is 4.5% in Canada.   This CIHI measure is actually fairly narrowly defined. It is the percentage of “the legal entity’s” total expenses associated with the administrative, finance, human resources and communications functional centres. However “the legal entity” used for this estimate is [1] only...
Post a Comment
Read more