The federal government says it is disappointed after the Public Service Alliance of Canada announced nationwide PSAC strike votes for 120,000 public service workers, a move the union says was forced by a wage offer averaging less than one per cent a year and a push for concessions at the bargaining table.
What the PSAC strike votes will decide
The votes cover members of three Treasury Board bargaining groups: Program and Administrative Services (PA), Technical Services (TC), and Education and Library Science (EB). Voting runs from November 16, 2026, to January 22, 2027, and PSAC says the dates, locations and registration details for information and voting sessions will be released on October 28, with members receiving their voting credentials by email.
The workers involved deliver services Canadians use daily: wildland firefighters, passport and benefit officers, fishery officers, federal teachers and librarians, and administrative staff across departments.
A strike vote is not a strike. It asks members whether they would authorize job action if talks fail. Under federal labour rules, a bargaining agent can declare a strike within 60 days of a vote carried by a majority of those who cast ballots. PSAC has set no strike date, and its national president, Sharon DeSousa, stresses that walking out is not the goal.
Wages sit at the centre of the dispute
PSAC says the two sides have been negotiating for a year and a half, and that the employer’s April wage offer averages less than one per cent a year — by the union’s math, a raise of about $58 a month over the life of the agreement. The offer, as PSAC describes it, was two per cent in 2025 followed by 0.5 per cent in each of 2026, 2027 and 2028. The union is seeking 4.75 per cent a year over three years.
With prices still rising faster than that, the union calls the offer a pay cut in real terms. “We want to negotiate a fair deal, but by pushing pay cuts and refusing to discuss any of our key issues, Treasury Board has given us no choice but to take strike votes,” DeSousa said.
Ottawa, for its part, said it was disappointed the union chose to move toward strike votes while negotiations continue. The Treasury Board’s own bargaining tracker still lists talks with all three groups as in progress.
More than pay is on the table
The dispute is not only about wages. PSAC says the employer wants to remove workforce adjustment — the rules governing what happens to employees whose jobs are cut — and the dental care plan from collective bargaining altogether, which would stop the union from negotiating improvements to either in future rounds.
The union also says the government wants to widen the window of hours in which a normal workday can be scheduled, without extra compensation, and to give management more discretion over provisions and leave. PSAC is pressing instead for progress on job security, remote work and protections against the effects of artificial intelligence, issues it says the employer has refused to take up.
Talks continue while members prepare to vote
The strike votes do not end bargaining. The TC group is scheduled to meet Treasury Board with a third-party mediator on October 24 and 25. The PA group went through mediation on September 29 and 30 and has further dates booked for November 11 and 12 and December 8 and 9, while the EB group had its mediation session on October 8 and 9.
Those sessions have not closed the gap. Coming out of the September PA talks, the union said the parties remained very far apart even with a mediator’s help.
A wider fight over a smaller public service
The Treasury Board groups are not the only PSAC members in dispute with this government. The union says more than 165,000 of its members are now at an impasse, including some 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency workers whose strike votes were called separately. That table is headed to mediation on November 24 and 25 after the federal labour board agreed to skip the Public Interest Commission stage.
The bargaining is unfolding while the federal workforce shrinks. Budget 2025 projected the public service would fall to roughly 330,000 employees by the end of 2028-29, down from nearly 368,000 in 2023-24, and layoff notices have already landed for thousands of federal workers as departments trim staff.
Both sides know how a fight like this can end. In 2023, 155,000 PSAC members spent 12 days on picket lines before reaching a settlement. The union is reminding the government of that history as the votes approach — and warning that its members have shown before they will walk if they decide the offer is not enough.
