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Black and minority workers in Canada less likely to get allianceAccording to a new report.
The report, released Tuesday by the Center for the Future of Work, found that one in four workers of color are covered by a union contract, compared with just one in three workers of non-color. The gap is even wider for women of color.
“Minority workers do not benefit as much from unionization as other workers, but they need unions as much or more than other workers,” said Jim Stanford, economist and report co-author and director of the Center for the Future of Work.
Stanford said Statistics Canada only recently began collecting more detailed labour force data, making the report possible.
The report said that in 2022, workers of color earned nearly 10% less hourly wages than non-workers of color, and the gap was also larger for women of color.
“The correlation between lower union coverage and lower wages confirms that unions need to more effectively organize workers of color and take collective action with them for better jobs and higher pay,” the report said.
“To achieve this goal, however, unions need to fight for racial equality more aggressively and consistently in everything they do: organizing, collective bargaining, union education, leadership development, and grassroots community engagement.”
Report co-author Winnie Ng, a labour activist and former national chair of social justice and democracy at Unifor at City University of Toronto, said a major factor in the underrepresentation of Black and visible workers in the union movement is the industries in which they are more likely to work.
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According to the report, workers of color are disproportionately represented in sectors of the economy dominated by contract and temporary labor and with limited job security and benefits, including in the gig economy.
Wu said Canadian unions need to devote significant resources to organizing and developing bargaining strategies that take these differences into account.
“We encourage the labor movement to be bold, to be creative, to think outside the box.”
Stanford said the data shows that in certain industries with less unionization, minority workers are represented more than in the overall workforce, including high-paying fields such as hospitality and finance. Meanwhile, in certain industries with more unionization, such as construction, education and public administration, minority workers are represented less.
“The underrepresentation of minority workers in these two large public sectors leads to their lower unionization rates … and also to their lower average wages,” Stanford said.
As for construction, workers of color in the industry are often “in non-union, less stable jobs,” he said.
“This suggests that within any given industry, workers of color are more likely to work in informal, irregular, part-time jobs, or jobs that are difficult to unionize for other reasons.”
But even in highly unionized industries with higher percentages of workers of color, inequality persists, Stanford said.
“Even in unionized industries like health care, workers of color are less likely to receive contracts, which we believe reflects the concentration of workers of color in some … marginal or precarious fields,” he said.
Wu said unions often operate in isolation, or even in competition with one another, but she believes they need to collaborate more, including on sectoral strategies for organizing and bargaining.
“We need some fundamental shifts in organizing, in education within the labor movement, and in collective bargaining.”
One of the report’s recommendations is that national and provincial labor organizations “should convene cross-sector organizing conferences focused on promoting union strengths in racialized communities and develop bold, coordinated organizing strategies targeting Black and racialized workers in low-wage industries.”
In addition to the data, the report includes interviews with 15 union members of color.
In these interviews, Wu said both hope and frustration were predominant.
“Unions may have policies, great policies about fairness, anti-racism and gender equality, but at the grassroots, in the workplace, how much of these policies are being put into practice?”
Stanford points out that it’s not just workers of color who need unions: unions need workers of color, too, especially in the private sector, where unionization rates are fairly low.
“Unions need more participation and involvement from workers of color as they make up an increasing portion of the workforce,” he said.
“I believe the union movement must become more successful in representing and organizing this growing segment of the workforce, especially given that these workers need unions the most.”
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