Toronto – March 4, 2024 – UFCW Canada has released its 2023 Annual Report. This report summarizes a year of growth and solidarity for our union, a year of increased stability and security for our members while organizing new industries and workplaces to give them access to good, union jobs.UFCW Canada is the country’s leading and most progressive private sector union, with more than 250,000 members coast-to-coast, in the food retail and processing, agriculture, health care, security, and hospitality industries.This new report documents a year of transformational change in the food retail sector, as our union secured industry-changing collective agreements with many of Canada’s food retail chains, ensuring good, decent employment in the sector. Negotiating committees were able to capitalize on a year of labour unrest to deliver some of the best collective bargaining results in a generation.
In 2023, UFCW Canada added 2,500 new members, including those in previously unrepresented sectors of the economy. Our union organized the first unionized videogame workers in the country, while continuing to organize other emerging industries such as cannabis retail and production. In addition, the social services sector has seen many workers turn to unionization as a means to improve their working conditions.
UFCW Canada has been the national advocate for migrant workers for decades, and in 2023, our union continued to make historic strides in the inclusion and protection of migrant workers vulnerable to employer abuse and human trafficking. UFCW Canada was instrumental in expanding the Agri-Food Pilot with the federal government, which allows for migrant workers to achieve permanent residency in Canada.
2023 also saw a key legislative victory in the introduction of Anti-Scab legislation at the federal level of which UFCW Canada was instrumental in advancing through parliament. Bill C-58, an Act to ban the use of replacement workers, will make it illegal for federally regulated employers to use scabs in a labour dispute.
