Members of one of Canada’s largest union locals in the country have started 2025 with a splash, with more than 90 percent of workers voting in favour of a strike.
Over 30,000 municipal employees, represented by Canadian Public Employees Union (CUPE) Local 79, have been in bargaining with the City of Toronto since their contract expired at the end of December. On January 21, the union held a vote to determine if workers were ready to go on strike to win their demands. The vote had an unprecedented turnout, and a huge majority came out in favour of job action. With this incredibly successful vote, the members of Local 79 have signalled that they are ready to fight for fair wages and stronger public services.
The backbone of Toronto
The wellbeing of workers at Local 79 is an index of the wellbeing of the city. Local 79 members work in water sanitation, safety inspection, food inspection, emergency dispatch, 311 dispatch, recreation programs, pools and community recreation centres, social services, Ontario Works, shelter spaces, harm reduction, social housing, childcare centres, long-term care facilities, and hospitals. If you live in Toronto, you have been helped by a Local 79 member. The essential services they provide are the reason Toronto remains a livable city.
And yet, over 13,000 members of Local 79 make minimum wage, almost nine dollars below a living wage for Toronto. Toronto continues to grow, while workers at Local 79 are being called on to cover for massive staffing shortfalls. Nurses at long-term care homes regularly work shifts where staff to patient ratios sit at 1:60, with over 500 job vacancies across 10 facilities. Ambulance dispatch offices are severely understaffed, with wait times of up to 12 minutes to even speak to a dispatcher. Retention in these communication centres sits at a depressing 30 percent. This understaffing is driven by inadequate pay, since workers are unable to get by in Toronto on such low wages.
Local 79 members see a clear answer to staffing shortages: pay workers enough to live in the city they serve, and they will not want to leave. The fight for decent pay for Local 79 workers is a fight for public services for all Torontonians, which cannot continue to function if workers’ wages continue to be outpaced by the cost of living.
The city has a fund of $3 million that it has set aside for contract settlements, money that has been levied through an increase in property tax. The City has indicated a desire to retain valuable public servants and recently reached deals with local 416 in December and TTC workers last July.
This comes as the city struggles to make ends meet. Doug Ford’s Conservatives have been quietly cutting provincial funding to essential services, leaving municipalities to foot the bill. By downloading public services, the provincial government creates the illusion that it is able to balance a budget, despite paying out billions of dollars for private spas and liquor privatization. With new legislation that allows for larger provincial interference in municipal affairs, Ford’s Conservatives can pressure municipalities to further privatize public services by forcing them to cut costs to pay for the essential services that the province has abandoned.
How to build a successful strike vote
The size of Local 79, and the variety of workers that constitute it, has led to some unique challenges for organizers. The difference in pay between their lowest and highest earners is $56/h, and divisions based on level of education and full and part-time hours means that solidarity between members is not automatic.
Part of the blame for these huge discrepancies lies with the union, who has historically bargained for percentage increases; these favour high earners and leave the majority of the Local behind. The 13,000 minimum wage workers at Local 79 are forced to pay for lackluster benefits and receive no sick days or vacation despite often working full-time hours.
The powerful strike vote is the result of a deliberate grappling with these internal issues. A winning strategy has to bring in the fullest number of workers, and union leadership has made the smart decision to put the needs of its lowest earners front and centre by demanding wage increases above the minimum wage. Raising the wage floor means that all workers have some stake in the fight, and the upward pressure allows all workers to demand more. In the long term, strategic focus on low-wage earners lessens divides between workers and builds a stronger union more capable of big wins.
The union has been practicing open and transparent bargaining, meaning that workers receive every proposal that the union gives to the employer, and every proposal the employer gives to the union. By eliminating the closed door policies that block members from the bargaining process, the union is held accountable, and members are better able to influence how their contracts are negotiated. Keeping workers in the loop builds a sense of ownership in the bargaining process, which allows the union to make decisions with the confidence that they have the full backing of their membership.
Organizing 101
But smart strategies aren’t enough to get a big strike vote; the success ultimately hinged on good old-fashioned organizing. A team of union staff and volunteers hit the phones and called every member of Local 79 in the span of a week. Then, after 30,000 calls had been made, they started going through the list again.
The importance of these one-on-one calls cannot be overstated. At a recent meeting for the Justice for Workers campaign, Local 79 president Nas Yadollahi clearly stated the rationale for this phone call marathon: “There is nothing that can do the work of one-on-one conversations with people.” The calls allowed union representatives to come to the bargaining table with demands informed by members’ perspectives, and to receive feedback and temperature checks on how members felt about bargaining. They also functioned as a get-out-the-vote initiative, which fueled the unprecedented turnout at the strike vote.
Actually talking to workers may seem like an obvious strategy, but it is sadly underused in the labour movement. There is a reason that the one-on-one conversation is regarded as a fundamental organizing tactic, and Local 79’s efforts stand as proof that it is just as effective as ever.
Starting the year on the right foot
The huge success of the strike vote is a proof-of-concept for a union that is learning from past mistakes and using strategies and tactics that empower workers. By putting low-wage earners first, and by returning to tried-and-true organizing principles, Local 79 has started its bargaining campaign on the right foot.
2025 promises to be an important year for labour in Ontario. Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union (OPSEU) members in the Ontario Public Service will be going into bargaining against the backdrop of unprecedented cuts from Doug Ford’s Conservatives. Doug and friends have been using tariffs as an excuse to pour even more money into the private sector, and it remains to be seen whether they will use this same bluster to attack public sector unions.
Whatever comes, unions in Ontario can benefit from following Local 79’s lead. Their successful strike vote is proof that to build successful bargaining campaigns, unions have to put workers in the driver’s seat.
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