Union leaders in rural and small-town Canada are struggling to hold their locals together. Over the past 20 years, the number of unionized jobs have gradually declined across the country, and rural unions face unique challenges that make combatting this harder. Rural bargaining units are often physically and psychologically distant from their parent union, and their smaller size makes it more costly to organize them relative to their bargaining power. In small towns where almost everyone knows everyone else, and employers are celebrated for “creating jobs,” workers also face social pressure not to organize.
A related problem comes from rural consciousness and the rise of right-wing populism. An ethic of self-reliance common to many rural communities leads workers to pursue solutions other than unionization when they face conflicts at work. Even more troubling are reactionary attitudes that emerge at a local level, fracturing solidarity between marginalized employees and their co-workers. These issues often take place in legal and policy environments that deny workers in certain sectors, such as agriculture, the same rights as workers in urban industries.
Despite these challenges, rural union leaders throughout Canada have developed strategies to meet them and have fought to organize workers in areas least hospitable to unions.
Small town, big problems
Throughout Canada, one reason that rural areas and small towns have lower union density than large cities is that rural workplaces are usually smaller in scale and employ fewer workers. In Alberta, for instance, 75 per cent of rural bargaining units have fewer than 100 members, while 53 per cent have fewer than 50 members. Meanwhile, in the same province, only 56 per cent of the urban bargaining units have fewer than 100 people in them.
[Suzanne Mills] explains that at the time, [the United Steelworkers] were not interested in organizing northern mines due to the cost, effort, and relatively low number of workers. Instead, “their strategy was focused on organizing university workers, such as [teaching assistants] and other [higher membership] groups.”
Smaller bargaining units can take more effort to organize, have higher servicing costs, and remit fewer dues back to the parent union. These considerations factor into the cost-benefit analysis of unions when they are deciding which workplaces to organize.
“I remember in 2014 talking to people from the United Steelworkers, who represent a lot of mining workers in southern Canada,” recalls Suzanne Mills, a professor of labour studies at McMaster University. She explains that at the time, they were not interested in organizing northern mines due to the cost, effort, and relatively low number of workers. Instead, “their strategy was focused on organizing university workers, such as [teaching assistants] and other [higher membership] groups.”
In any local or bargaining unit, ensuring that the members are engaged and involved in running the union can also be a challenge. This problem is magnified in small, rural locals where there are fewer members to rely on to fill positions or to take on the work of union activities.
The scale of rural communities and workplaces not only makes organizing less financially viable, but it can also promote social dynamics that inhibit unionization. In a small town, employers are more likely to be viewed as co-workers or neighbours instead of bosses.
“I would say the main challenge in union organization would be membership involvement,” says Lorraine McMillan, chief union steward for Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) Local 403, located in Quinte West, Ontario. “Our members want the union and the protection and benefits that the union brings but nobody wants to get involved. Union positions on the executive are volunteer and nobody wants to volunteer their time to do so. We also have very low involvement [in] our regular meetings.”
Rural workers often have long commutes and must travel great distances to reach their workplaces. This disincentivizes involvement in union activities, because they have less spare time. In sectors where work sites are remote, like extractive industries, this problem is worse. Employees in those industries may not have shared work spaces or the opportunity to interact with each other.
“For fly-out operations and mines, organizing is extremely difficult since people are coming from different places, and they are not located in one space,” Mills observes. “Workforces are small, and there is a lot of subcontracting. Subcontracting has become institutionalized in new mines.”
The scale of rural communities and workplaces not only makes organizing less financially viable, but it can also promote social dynamics that inhibit unionization. In a small town, employers are more likely to be viewed as co-workers or neighbours instead of bosses. Unionizing is also not always seen as community building, as it involves a confrontation between workers and employers.
The lack of employment opportunities in some rural regions grants additional social capital to employers who, as “job creators,” are credited with bringing those jobs to the region. This translates to greater social pressure on workers to not rock the boat and jeopardize those jobs. In a small town or work site, you can expect to run into your boss at the grocery store or bar, making it harder for employees to compartmentalize and escape from stressful periods of conflict at work.
On the other hand, while the majority of rural workplaces and bargaining units are smaller, this is not uniformly the case. In industries like meat-packing a workplace might employ thousands.
“The majority of these meat-packing facilities are in rural locations,” says Derek Johnstone, special assistant to the national president of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). “Once upon a time, Toronto was called ‘Hogtown’ because the St. Clair area was the meat-packing district. Those days are long gone. That has moved to places far from Toronto, and to communities where these meat plants are out of sight, out of mind, but will employ a couple thousand people.”
Unions have sought to meet these challenges mainly by structuring the union itself to facilitate organizing. One way that this is accomplished is by consolidating resources in large, centralized locals while maintaining smaller bargaining units. Although the UFCW has bargaining units that are as small as two people, most of its locals are in fact province-wide in scope.
“‘Local’ is basically a misnomer now. Provincial unions are what they are,” notes Johnstone. “Once upon a time, there were many locals in a province, but over the years through forming the composite local they’ve essentially pooled those resources. And as a result of that they have the capacity to have their own organizing departments with full-time organizing staff and an organizing director! With that, they can really help workers in any community throughout their jurisdiction.”
Spatial interests often override class interests for those living in rural areas and small towns. [...] While an urban worker may only need to move across their city to take up a new job, rural workers often have to move farther to pursue opportunities, taking them away from their friends and family who live nearby.
This centralization and pooling of resources enables the parent union to compensate for the challenges of organizing comparatively small rural workplaces. The servicing costs are mitigated by reducing bureaucracy at the local level, and the union has greater capacity to assist bargaining units.
Similarly, by building enough union density in a specific sector, unions can pursue sectoral bargaining, wherein unions negotiate a collective agreement that includes every worker in a sector. More common in Europe, sectoral bargaining can be contrasted with enterprise bargaining, which focuses instead on one workplace. Workers in certain industries in Canada have had success with this approach. In Alberta, for instance, construction workers mainly engage in sectoral bargaining. The advantages of this approach for rural workers are similar to those that come with large locals: concentrating bargaining power and resources compensates for the small size of rural workplaces.
Rural consciousness and right-wing populism
In addition to the challenges of organizing workers in small, remote communities, there are also ideological factors that inhibit unionization. Rural culture has themes of rugged individualism, an attitude that promotes self-reliance over collective action. This attitude is especially prominent in certain industries. In the oil and gas industry, for instance, this self-reliant mindset inhibits union organizing. In the energy sector, there is frequently enough work available that people take it upon themselves to quit and find another job when they face trouble at work, rather than joining a union.
Spatial interests often override class interests for those living in rural areas and small towns. Rural workers are less likely to be willing or able to relocate for work for fear of losing their social connections and support networks. While an urban worker may only need to move across their city to take up a new job, rural workers often have to move farther to pursue opportunities, taking them away from their friends and family who live nearby. Likewise, property ownership can discourage rural workers from relocating. Faced with the complicated nature of navigating the rural real estate market, it is often simpler to remain in their current job or find another nearby.
“What happened in my study was that there were queer workers who would be frustrated because they’d say: ‘My union says it’s amazing on LGBTQ issues, and that it does all these things, but at the local level there is nothing.’”
This lack of mobility dovetails with the increasingly scant employment opportunities in rural regions to make workers apprehensive about acting in ways that might harm their employment prospects. While an employee in a major city can expect to find other work if their employer frowns upon their union activities, rural workers have fewer options. In small communities, someone with a negative reputation among employers for union organizing may end up unable to find other work. The situation is worse for migrant workers, who make up a significant portion of Canada’s agricultural workforce. Legally bound to a specific employer, they are often threatened with deportation for union activities.
A more significant hurdle is right-wing populism in rural Canada. Rural workers and union members are typical targets of conservative messaging that frames them as victims of urban elites. This rural alienation and socially conservative wedge issues are leveraged by right-wing politicians to convince working-class Canadians that they are allies while at the same time passing legislation that undermines unions’ ability to advocate for working-class rights. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has publicly denigrated public-sector unions while making overtures to private-sector ones. However, Ford’s populism is aesthetic and cultural rather than material. His buck-a-beer policy and permitting liquor to be sold in corner stores appeals to a caricature of what blue-collar workers value while failing to improve their lives.
The social conservatism that is more prevalent in rural locals and among their membership alienates minority workers and undermines solidarity. A recent study conducted by Dr. Mills found gaps between the messaging of unions and the reality in their rural locals regarding LGBTQ issues.
“What happened in my study was that there were queer workers who would be frustrated because they’d say: ‘My union says it’s amazing on LGBTQ issues, and that it does all these things, but at the local level there is nothing.’”
This right-wing populism has less of an impact on primary agriculture – which includes activities that produce raw materials, like fruit harvesting or caring for livestock – where many employees are foreign workers. Migrant workers, largely from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America, are insulated from Canada’s domestic politics. Right-wing populism also has nativist and anti-immigrant components that have little appeal for immigrant agricultural workers.
As Johnstone explains: “Migrants can’t engage with the political system in Canada. Their focus is going to be on their experience as workers, and their ability to participate in anything that resembles a democratic process is whether they join the union, and whether or not they vote in favour of a collective agreement. That is their only chance to engage with the democratic process.”
Some unions have responded to this increase in populism by pursuing a more transactional approach with those in power. For example, in Ontario, the Carpenters’ Regional Council announced its endorsement of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives a month after securing $14 million from Ontario’s Skills Development Fund. Similarly, labour scholars Stephanie Ross and Larry Savage have argued that Unifor has weakened in its traditional support for the New Democratic Party (NDP) while making inroads with other parties. Nevertheless, there is little evidence of a widespread realignment of unions with conservative parties.
Legal and policy hurdles
The legal and policy frameworks governing unionization in Canada are determined at both the national and provincial levels. At the national level, the Rand formula holds that in workplaces with union certification, every worker covered by a collective agreement must pay dues. This 1946 Supreme Court judgment eliminates the issue of workers receiving benefits of collective bargaining without paying dues to the union. The decision also means that provinces cannot follow the lead of some U.S. states and pass “right to work” legislation which allows workers to opt out of paying into the union. A right to union certification is also enshrined nationally: when the majority of employees vote to unionize, their employer must engage in collective bargaining.
However, the provinces also have considerable discretion over many other rules concerning unionization. Crucially, provinces can alter the rules that govern how voting is conducted for union certification or decertification. For instance, they can determine whether it involves a “card check,” in which unions are certified by collecting signatures or union cards from a percentage of workers, or a vote by secret ballot. The former is more conducive to union certification because certification by secret ballot creates a delay in which employers have time to organize an anti-union campaign.
Some prototypically rural sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, have also been excluded from provincial legislation in ways that affect work conditions and whether workers can organize.
“Agricultural works are excluded from Ontario’s Labour Relations Act,” notes Johnstone, “which governs how workers can join a union and compels employers to bargain in good faith. It’s a long story, but the UFCW took this exclusion to the Supreme Court, and ultimately the [Dalton] McGuinty government was compelled to remedy this. What they then did was create a separate law that met the bare minimum directive from the Supreme Court: the Agricultural Employees Protection Act.”
“Agricultural workers were fully excluded from Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act until 2006. That only ended because the UFCW fought for it. To this day, though, the inclusion of agricultural workers in the Act is very limited.”
A key factor in overcoming these hurdles is having a sympathetic government, particularly at the provincial level. In British Columbia, for example, NDP governments have addressed some of the policies that exclude rural workers, and agricultural workers specifically, from legal protection. There, agricultural workers are included in the B.C. Labour Code, and therefore have the same right to join a union as workers in any other sector, and employers must bargain with them in good faith.
When facing governments that are unsupportive of rural worker’s rights, Canadian unions turn to the courts and lobbying efforts. In addition to taking the McGuinty government to court to challenge the exclusion of agricultural workers from the Ontario Labour Relations Act, the UFCW is currently suing the federal government over the lack of training that agricultural workers receive when handling pesticides. Unions representing rural workers also make an effort to lobby different governments, but unions and worker advocates are outnumbered in this realm by employer associations.
Grounds for optimism
Despite these obstacles, those organizing rural workers remain optimistic. At OPSEU Local 403, McMillan is inspired by the solidarity of those fighting for compensation after the repeal of Ontario’s Bill 124. The 2019 bill capped pay increases for public-sector workers at 1 per cent for three years. After being successfully challenged twice in court, Bill 124 was repealed in 2024 – yet thousands of public-sector workers in Ontario are still waiting for the wages that they are owed.
“We’re in the middle of a campaign with 13,000 members against the Ford government for retroactive pay and better wages, after Ford enacted Bill 124. There are 70 units in bargaining right now and we all filed a joint conciliation together. It’s pretty amazing to be a part of such solidarity.”
Johnstone finds similar inspiration in the UFCW’s recent successes in organizing rural workers: “Last year, we had a group of migrant workers from the Global South – in the mushroom industry – organize. They had the tremendous courage to rise up, reach out to a union, and exercise their fundamental labour rights and join the union. And they’ve become the largest group of farm workers in Canadian history to join the union. It’s incredible!”
