Unionization and collective bargaining continue to deliver material gains for workers by way of higher wages and access to supplementary benefits like health insurance and pensions. While researchers have charted a declining union wage advantage over the last few decades, collective bargaining still yields important gains for workers. Unions have sought to remedy stagnating real wages and growing inflation by seeking wage increases that align with the cost of living through bargaining processes and labour militancy.

This report provides comparison of wages and benefits for unionized and non-unionized workers across industries in Canada and in the province of Saskatchewan by drawing from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey (LFS) as well as custom tabulations acquired from Statistics Canada, retrieved from the LFS.

Download the full report here.

Funding for this report was provided by the Unifor Labour Relations Scholar position at the University of Regina and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

Angèle Poirier is a doctoral student at Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public. Her areas of interest are agricultural and Indigenous policy in Canada. She can be reached at apoirier@uregina.ca.

Dr. Andrew Stevens is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Regina. His research focuses on migrant labour policy, labour studies, industrial relations, the sociology of work and employment, and political economy. He can be reached by email at andrew.stevens@uregina.ca.

The Union Advantage: A Comparison of Union and Non-Unionized Wages in Canada and Saskatchewan