Public Sector Unionization Grows
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1501 .... October 26, 2017
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Public Sector Unionization Grows
Doug Allan
The composition of the labour movement has fundamentally changed over the last twenty years. This article reviews the dramatic changes in public and private sector unionization and some surprising differences that have emerged between Ontario and the rest of Canada. Potential for growth is possible, even in the public sector.
Ontario has 1.3 million public sector workers and currently 943,000 of them are covered by a union. That means that 72.2% of public sector employees have union coverage.
Since 1997, public sector union density has modestly increased from about 70% to 72% of total public sector employees. With a significant increase in public sector employment also occurring over that period, there has been an increase in public... sector union coverage from 652,000 to 943,000 employees -- about a 47% increase in 19 years.
That still leaves another 363,000 unorganized public sector employees. Assuming that 10% of public sector employees are management (130,000) then there would be roughly 233,000 public sector workers still to organize in the province. In other words, maximum public sector union growth is about 25% (assuming no further increases in public sector employment).
In contrast, there are still about 4 million private sector workers who do not have union coverage -- almost seven times the current level of private sector union coverage. Consequently, there are currently about 50% more public sector workers with union coverage in the province than private sector workers in Ontario (943,000 versus 631,000).
Union coverage in Ontario as a whole is 26.7% -- down from 29.9% in 1997. The current level of 26.7% is significantly below the Canada-wide average of 30.4%. If Ontario was extracted from the Canada-wide average, the gap would be even larger, with the rest of Canada at 32.6% union coverage. So there is almost a six per cent gap between Ontario and the rest of Canada.