Racialized workers less likely to be unionized: report

Workers strike outside the Hotel Doubletree by Hilton in Montreal, Thursday, August 1, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Black and racialized workers in Canada are less likely to be represented by a union, according to a new report.

The report released Tuesday by the Centre for Future Work found that a quarter of racialized workers are covered by a union contract, compared with one third of non-racialized workers. The gap was even wider for racialized women.

"Racialized workers have not benefited from unionization to the same degree as other workers, and they need unions as much or more than other workers," said Jim Stanford, economist, director of the Centre for Future Work and a co-author of the report.

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Statistics Canada only recently started collecting the more detailed labour force data that made this report possible, said Stanford.

Hourly pay for racialized workers was almost 10 per cent lower than non-racialized workers in 2022, the report said, again with a wider gap for racialized women.

"The correlation between lower union coverage and lower wages confirms that unions need to become more effective at organizing with racialized workers, and engaging with them in collective action for better jobs and better pay," the report said.

"For that to occur, however, unions need to become more visible and more consistent in fighting for racial equality in everything they do: from organizing campaigns, to collective bargaining, to union education, to leadership development, and grassroots community engagement."

A major factor contributing to the underrepresentation of Black and racialized workers in the union movement is the sectors in which they are more likely to work, said report co-author Winnie Ng, a labour activist and former Unifor National Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Toronto Metropolitan University.

According to the report, racialized workers are disproportionately represented in sectors of the economy where contract and temporary jobs dominate, with limited job security and benefits, including in the gig economy.

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Canadian unions need to be putting significant resources toward organizing and bargaining strategies that take these disparities into account, said Ng.

"We are encouraging the labour movement to be bold, to be creative, and just think outside of the box."

The data shows that in certain sectors where unionization is less prevalent, the proportion of racialized workers is higher than it is in the overall labour force, said Stanford, including hospitality and in higher-paid areas like finance. Meanwhile, that proportion is lower in certain highly unionized sectors like construction as well as education and public administration.

"The underrepresentation of racialized workers in those two big public sectors contributes both to their lower rate of unionization ... and to their lower average wages," said Stanford.

As for construction, racialized workers in that sector are often "working non-union, less secure jobs," he said.

"This suggests to me that within any given industry, racialized workers are more likely to be in a job that's informal, irregular, part-time or hard to unionize for other reasons."

But even in highly unionized sectors with a higher proportion of racialized workers, inequalities persist, said Stanford.

"Even within a unionized sector like healthcare, racialized workers are less likely to be covered by a contract, and that, we think, reflects the concentration of racialized workers in some of those ... peripheral or precarious segments," he said.

Unions often operate in silos or even in competition, said Ng, but she believes they need to collaborate more, including on sectoral strategies for organizing and bargaining.

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"We need some fundamental shift in organizing, in doing education work within the labour movement, and in collective bargaining."

One of the report's recommendations is that labour bodies on the national and provincial levels "should hold Intersectional Organizing Conferences, to focus on promoting the union advantage among racialized communities, and develop bold and co-ordinated organizing strategies to target Black and racialized workers across low-wage sectors."

In addition to the data, the report also includes 15 interviews conducted with racialized trade unionists.

In these interviews, Ng said both hope and frustration were front and centre.

"Unions might have policies, beautiful policies on equity, on anti-racism and gender equality, but at the ground level, in the workplace, how much does that get practiced?"

It's not just that racialized workers need unions, noted Stanford: unions need racialized workers, especially in the private sector, where the unionization rate is quite low.

"Unions need stronger membership and participation from racialized workers because they're going to make up a larger and larger share of the overall workforce," he said.

"I think it's an imperative for the union movement to become more successful at representing and organizing this growing segment of the workforce, especially given that these are the workers that need unions the most."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 13, 2024.