CityNews explainer: how do strike actions work exactly?

According to Statistics Canada, the country is on track to triple the amount of work stoppages it’s seen in two years.

In 2022, it was reported there were 176 work stoppages across the country in all industries.

In 2023, it ballooned to 778. So far is year, with still four months left to go, there have been 665 work stoppages.

READ MORE: Exploring the impact of work stoppages in Canada

But how exactly do strike actions work?

Winnipeg labour and employment lawyer Kara Bashutski spoke with CityNews and explained.

“So when we’re talking about strikes and lockouts, that can only occur when the collective agreement is not in place. So any employee who is part of a union, they cannot strike while their collective agreement is in force. The collective agreement is like a contract that their union will negotiate on their behalf, and they’re typically for a duration of several years. So we’ve seen recently, a lot of these collective agreements have expired, which has opened the door for wage negotiations. If that (fails), strikes or lockouts usually occur.

“It varies from province to province, but in Manitoba, if the wage negotiations or collective agreement negotiations aren’t going well and the parties can’t agree, the union will take a strike vote and if their members vote for a strike, then that’s what they do. It’s a job action and it really escalates to get agreement on matters such as wages, working conditions, remote work is a big one right now that they couldn’t otherwise agree on.

“So this is for unionized members. Sometimes the employers themselves can do a lockout which is kind of the converse of the members themselves taking a strike action.

“So for example, the Air Canada pilots, their collective agreement was in place for 10 years. It’s expired, so this is the first time in 10 years and conditions have changed massively since 2014.

“With CNR (Canadian National Railway), they can’t come to an agreement and sometimes if you can’t come to an agreement, they go before the labour board depending on if they’re federal or provincial. And yes, they can be quite contentious and take years to negotiate.

“Then what happens is they’re kind of status quo from when their last agreement was, and when they come to an agreement, then it’s applied retroactively. But that’s where the strike and the lockouts are a possibility, and we are seeing that a lot right now.”