By Rhea Rollmann | The Independent
Newfoundland and Labrador has the fourth-lowest minimum wage in the country, the third-highest rate of workplace injury fatalities, and the highest occupational disease fatality rate.
Yet the province’s labour leaders say provincial parties and candidates aren’t discussing the issues that matter most to workers.
Sherry Hillier, president of CUPE Newfoundland and Labrador, says front-line workers in healthcare, education, and municipal services “are not being heard.”
“Our workers are public sector workers. You can’t go to a hospital without seeing a clerical staff, a housecleaner, someone who’s going to feed you. In our schools, the secretary is the first one you meet when you bring your child to school [and] the custodians who clean those schools and keep germs out of the schools — these are our workers,” she told The Independent. “They’re not being heard and they’re not being seen.”
NAPE president Jerry Earle also isn’t impressed by what he’s seen in the election campaign.
“Unfortunately when you look at labour issues in general, I don’t see either of the parties talking about them, especially from a broader labour perspective,” he said. “That concerns me.”
Instead, one of the most talked-about issues in the 2025 election campaign is the Memorandum of Understanding on new energy partnerships with Quebec, which is a “disservice” to the province’s workers, says Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour (NLFL) President Jessica McCormick. She’s concerned the parties’ focus on the Churchill Falls MOU has drawn attention away from other substantive issues, especially workers’ issues.
“We should be hearing real concrete commitments and clear plans from each of the parties on how they’re going to make changes that will improve the day-to-day lives of all working people, whether they’re unionized or non-unionized.”
As for the MOU itself, McCormick says the federation is still analyzing it, and that not enough information has been released to make an informed judgement. She says it’s not just a question of how much revenue the province will gain from it, but how the province intends to use that revenue.
“Newfoundland and Labrador has a tendency to fall into the trap of mega projects above all else, and that isn’t necessarily the solution to the challenges that workers in the province face. I want to understand the type of jobs [that will be created], the quality of the jobs, whether they’ll be unionized, how long term and stable they’ll be, and to ensure there is a more than adequate process of consulting and engagement with Indigenous communities in Labrador.”
Pay equity: unkept promises and a government dragging its heels
At the election outset, the NLFL identified 10 priority issues, from affordable and accessible housing to universal accessible childcare.
The federation also flagged pay equity. The Liberal government passed pay equity legislation in 2022 but the legislation has been criticized by advocacy groups as poorly written, too narrow in scope to be effective, and lacking clarity around enforcement and regulations. “Nothing has really changed on the pay equity front,” says McCormick. “It’s been three years and there’s been a whole lot of stalling from the provincial government.”
McCormick says the Liberals have instead been trying to shift the conversation to pay transparency instead, “as a way to pacify the conversation around pay equity.”
“We continue to push on this,” she says. “They’ve taken so long to draft these regulations we could have just had adequate consultations many years ago and crafted really good policy around pay. To be caught in this limbo for three years speaks to how we should have just done this in the first place. We can’t stop talking about it. The gender wage gap still exists, and as the cost of living increases, the pressure continues to increase on people who are not paid fairly for the work that they do.”
Fighting ‘privatization creep’
The Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees (NAPE), the province’s largest union, representing 25,000 public and private sector workers, sent a series of questions to each of the three parties. The questions address the cost of living crisis, climate change, healthcare and public services, privatization of public services, workplace violence and back to work legislation. The union published each of the parties’ responses on its website and social media, along with analysis and commentary.
For NAPE, fighting what Earle calls “privatization creep”—the slow and sometimes subtle outsourcing of public services into private companies—is a priority. He says this outsourcing has resulted in public services being provided at a lower quality, and higher cost, than if they were properly funded through the public sector.
“It erodes public services—everything from the growing use of travel nurses, putting public dollars into private entities to provide public services when they could have been maintained for cheaper in the public sector rather than going the private route,” he says. “That’s not to knock private companies in the province that do great work, but public services should remain public. If they were properly funded we would not have to put the money into private entities to duplicate or replace public services.”
Earle says successive governments’ failures to adequately invest in public services has also led to employee retention problems and staff shortages across numerous sectors. “It’s not just in healthcare—we’ve seen it in a number of areas, in our correctional services, in social workers,” he says. “We’re getting into the winter months now and we have a shortage of heavy equipment technicians, of those that operate our snowplows, we’ve got shortages of ambulance personnel, nursing personnel. It’s quite concerning and unfortunately I’m pretty sure some of it’s deliberate as part of the shift to private entities.”
CUPE shares NAPE’s concerns around creeping privatization.
“Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services says they’re not privatizing healthcare, but in a roundabout way they are,” says Hillier. “First and foremost I’d like to stop the spread of privatization.”
She’s concerned about new software management systems being brought into NLHS workplaces which she describes as “a job-killer,” pointing to examples in other jurisdictions where replacing workers with software has led to job losses. “It tells us that government and NL Health Services can’t manage their own employees,” she says, adding the same is happening with food services. “They’re contracting out our jobs.”
Hillier also cites the situation of paramedics. While she applauds their being brought into the public healthcare system, she’s deeply worried about the contract to a private, for-profit company to manage the rural air ambulance system. The province signed a $561-million contract with Medavie, which bills itself as a “national health solutions partner and innovative leader in benefits management, health management, primary care and healthcare delivery.” Hillier is concerned about the consequences, saying private contracts of this type have led to terrible outcomes for workers and the public alike in PEI, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
She’s also concerned about job cuts in the post-secondary sector. While there’s been discussion about budget cuts and rising tuition fees, she says job losses among front-line staff are also happening and are undermining the post-secondary system. “We’re not hearing about this,” she says. “Our members—public sector members—are being cut, and that’s unacceptable.”
Promises, promises
Both the Liberal and PC parties dropped platform documents late in the election campaign, a couple of weeks after the NDP released its platform. The Liberals are promising 10,000 new jobs through new energy agreements with Quebec, though as McCormick indicated there’s no proof those will actually materialize.
The PCs say they will introduce a rotational worker tax credit. All parties are promising to hire more healthcare and social workers. The NDP has the most detailed set of commitments for workers, which includes introducing enforceable labour standards for gig and precarious workers, restoring card check certification and introducing anti-scab legislation, and increasing the minimum wage to $22 an hour.
Promises are one thing, say labour leaders, but action is another.
“Unfortunately in elections we see a whole lot of promises, but as we say here in Newfoundland, the proof is in the pudding,” said Earle.
Keeping workers in mind during the election
Throughout the election campaign, it seems all three parties have been tripping over each other in their haste to promise tax cuts, with business lobbyists cheering them on. McCormick is critical about the way tax cuts have been discussed so far, saying there really needs to be two separate tax conversations: one for rich people and one for everybody else. The problem, she says, is rich people aren’t paying their fair share of taxes, and broad sweeping tax cuts perpetuate that problem, while also depriving the government of the revenue base it needs to provide public services.
“If we want people to have access to strong public services, then we need to fund them in a way that makes sure everyone has access and there are no barriers. That requires investment. So when we just talk about tax cuts, or ‘no new taxes’ or tax credits, that takes away from the questions we should be prioritizing, which is how can we make sure that everybody has access to the supports they need? All of that is funded through our taxes,” McCormick says.
“That might cost us more, but isn’t it a wise investment to make sure everybody has access to healthcare, to make sure that nobody has to go into massive debt to go to college or university?
“We talk about [tax cuts] because working class people are struggling to make ends meet, so of course they don’t want further pressure put on their household budget through taxes. But somebody earning minimum wage, a working-class person, should not be lumped into the same category as somebody who makes $200,000 a year, or a corporation. The conversation around taxes isn’t the same for those people, but we still talk about it as if it’s one big soup of taxes,” she continues.
“That minimum wage worker or working class worker is going to rely a lot more on public services and wants them to be good, strong public services. And the people who are the wealthiest should be contributing their fair share to make them better public services.”
‘Unprecedented affordability crisis‘
The NLFL represents the more than 70,000 unionized workers in the province, but also plays a larger role in keeping workers’ and labour issues on the table and in the media. It’s pushing to improve labour laws by demanding anti-scab legislation (to prevent employers from using replacement workers to undermine strikes) and card check certification. The NDP has committed to implementing both of these measures.
To form a union, workers at their workplace need to sign union cards indicating their desire to form a union. Under a ‘card check certification’ system, if a clear majority of workers sign union cards (typically 50 to 65 per cent, depending on the jurisdiction) they get to automatically form a union. That’s how things worked across Canada until the 1970s, when some provinces began succumbing to demands from business lobbyists to make the unionization process more difficult by also requiring secret workplace votes.
These votes, supervised by government, take considerable time to schedule and provide an opportunity for employers to intimidate workers into changing their minds. They require high turnout thresholds, and abstentions are counted as ‘no’ votes. The extra steps also provide additional opportunities for employers to delay the unionization process through legal challenges. These modifications to the system have been loudly denounced by labour rights advocates.
Newfoundland and Labrador retained card-check certification until 1994, when the Liberal government of Clyde Wells added these more onerous measures. In 2012, the PC government passed legislation to eliminate the double barrier and restored card-check certification. But in 2014, the same PC government, backed by the opposition Liberals, reversed that policy and reimposed additional anti-union measures. Labour organizers have been pushing to reinstate card-check certification ever since. Provincial governments in British Columbia and Manitoba have restored card-check certification in recent years, and this approach is also used in Quebec and New Brunswick.
The ability to form unions is an important part of building a strong economy, McCormick says. “Workers’ issues are everybody’s issues, because having a good wage and protection in the workplace gives you the security that takes one thing off your plate. If you can rely on a good paycheque and a union to go to when you’re dealing with a bad boss or when you’re working in unsafe conditions, that’s one less thing that you have to worry about, and then you can go home and focus on the other things that come up in your day-to-day life. When people are able to earn better wages, they’re able to go out to eat with their family, they’re able to contribute to our tax system, which funds our public services.”
McCormick says parties seem to be forgetting that workers are voters too. She points to commitments from all three parties to improve the healthcare system by hiring more doctors and nurses, and emphasizes there’s more to the healthcare system than doctors and nurses. The same goes for other sectors, from education to the industrial trades.
“There are so many workers in healthcare, from the people who are working in labs, to the people cleaning the facilities, to the people doing blood collection,” she says. “All of those folks are a really important part of the healthcare system and I’ve been a little disappointed that we haven’t heard more holistically about those workers.
“Healthcare workers are feeling burnt out. We don’t have enough of them. That impacts wait times. It impacts access to healthcare facilities across Newfoundland and Labrador.”
McCormick is critical about how little she’s heard from the parties on workers’ issues. She points to the PC’s promise of a tax credit for rotational workers, saying it does nothing to address the challenge of providing those workers good jobs here in Newfoundland and Labrador.
“These are all small steps,” she says. “I’d like to hear about the bigger picture: what are the parties planning to do when it comes to income support, when it comes to minimum wage and a living wage, when it comes to the actual material conditions? That’s what’s most important to every person. Am I in a position to pay my rent this month? Do I have what I need to cover my bills and buy groceries? How do I cover my bills and pay for my kid to participate in a sport or something? That’s what’s top of mind for people, not what we’ll do with revenue several years down the road from an MOU. I feel like our politicians are disconnected from those everyday troubles.”
