Overview

The electricity generation, transmission, and distribution sector in Canada directly employs 97,000 workers.

CUPE represents over 32,700 workers in the energy sector in Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec and in Federal Crown Corporations. They are employed as trades and maintenance workers, customer service representatives, accountants, administration assistants, billing and records agents, communications staff, drafters, programmer analysts, technologists, power line workers, technicians, clerks, skilled trades workers, atomic energy workers and call center workers.

Our members work mainly in electricity generation, distribution, and transmission for public and private companies.

CUPE collective agreements cover the following members:

  • 600 in Alberta
  • 15,500 in Ontario
  • 800 in Manitoba
  • 15,750 in Quebec
  • several hundred in Federal crown companies.

Issues

Electricity production, Climate change and Just Transition

Canada uses more electricity per person than any other country, but most of this electricity is produced using sources that do not contribute to climate change. Canada produces three per cent of the world’s electricity, and Canadians make up 0.5% of the world’s population. Canada is a large electrical energy producer and a net exporter of low emission electricity.

Total generation capacity in 2017 was 145.213 gigawatts. Of actual generation, 81 per cent comes from low or zero emission generation as follows:

  • Hydro 60.38%
  • Coal/Natural gas 20.12%
  • Nuclear 12.72%
  • Wind 6.51%
  • Solar 0.24%
  • Other 0.03%

Electricity covers 20% of our total energy needs in Canada.

Canada also exports nearly 50 terawatt hours of clean electricity to the USA every year.

The government has signed various international treaties agreeing to reduce our dependence on greenhouse gas emitting energy, including the 2015 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Changes include phasing out coal power generation by 2030. This transition away from coal has meant a focus on a Just Transition for electricity generation workers and their communities, with unions fighting for government investment in retraining and redeployment of affected workers.

The future of low carbon energy is through electrification of infrastructure, the expansion of the increased efficient use, and generation of low-carbon electrical power.

Privatization

Across Canada, investment in wind and solar energy generation has been made through public subsidies of private investment. This private sector investment has enabled the rise of private ownership of electricity generation.

Provinces have promoted private and cooperative solar, wind and tidal generation projects. This approach undermines publicly-owned and centrally-managed electricity generation. This has led to inefficiencies in the make-up of electricity generation and distribution causing unnecessary cost and price increases.

CUPE’s position is that green energy jobs should be public sector jobs for an effective and fair energy future. And, that electricity generation, distribution, and transmission should be invested in, operated, and regulated by the government to meet the needs of Canadians.

The energy sector in Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec is under increased threat of privatization through financialization and the selling-off of public utilities and infrastructure. However, the immediate short-term threats to energy sector workers is the further corporatization of utilities and more contracting out.

In Alberta, EPCOR - a municipally owned utility in Edmonton - has divested entirely from its power generation business, selling it to the private sector. The utility has nonetheless retained control of distribution and transmission, as well as sector technologies such as signals and metering. ENMAX, which is owned by the City of Calgary, is investing in the expansion of public solar and wind generation projects.

In Quebec, CUPE locals are campaigning to maintain their history of public ownership of power with an emphasis on bringing new wind generation under the provincial public utility, Hydro-Québec. The loss of many jobs in the atomic energy sector, following the 2012 closure of the Gentilly-2 nuclear plant (decommissioning continues), illustrated the Quebec government’s lack of adequate planning for a fair and equitable transition for displaced workers. Just Transition plans are needed to protect workers and their communities as the industry continues to transform.

A global trend in the privatization of public assets has emerged called “asset recycling” that seeks to monetize and marketize public assets for private gain. Asset recycling can take the form of sale and lease-back agreements, concession arrangements, franchises, or the private management of public infrastructure. An example of this move of governments to gain short-term (and short sighted) revenue from privatization is Ontario’s privatization of its transmission company Hydro One. Money from the sale was directed to an asset trust to fund infrastructure projects and “subsidize” prices and profits of these new companies.

This new threat to public energy comes in addition to privatization’s continuing creep in the energy sector. Techniques to extend the reach of privatization include incentives for the private ownership of decentralized renewable generation, the private development of new direct-current transmission lines for export, and the selling-off of local distribution companies.

In the UK and much of Europe, the renationalization of privatized utilities, including electricity utilities, has gained the support of the majority of the public. Calls for renationalization of electrical and other utilities are also growing in Australia and countries in Africa, along with calls for increased regulation and a transition to green energy generation.

In Germany, Spain, the UK and France, a process of “remunicipalization” is underway that involves bringing privatized utilities back under public ownership through city-wide cooperatives owned by local governments. Australian unions have also fought – and won – high profile campaigns against privatization of their generation capacity while focusing on green energy alternatives to coal generation.

Internationally, the privatization of public utilities and marketization of energy prices continues even as people become wary of the failures and broken promises of privatized monopoly utilities. These include increase in costs that privatization has brought in the UK, Germany, Australia, USA, India, and Nigeria.

Bargaining

Bargaining structures

While the federal government regulates the environmental impacts of electricity generation – such as watersheds for hydro-electric production, atomic energy, and inter-provincial transmission – all other aspects of the energy sector are provincial responsibilities. Electrical generation, distribution and transmission fall under provincial jurisdiction, organized into sub-provincial corporations in Ontario and Alberta. Structures for bargaining mirror these arrangements.

Our one local in Manitoba engages in informal communication with Unifor and IBEW locals to facilitate bargaining. CUPE engages in centralized bargaining in Quebec, through a voluntary union coalition. In Alberta, CUPE has one utility local and one municipal local covering members in the municipal utility.

Ontario, for example, has many bargaining units across the electricity market. Hydro One agreements are regularly used as a base for comparison by provincial and other employers at local distribution companies. Of concern in Ontario is the continued increase of temporary and contract workers at Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation. This is a deliberate targeting of workers’ wages and benefits to contain costs.

Retention, recruitment, and training

Convincing governments to take a medium to long-term view of retention and recruitment of electricity workers has been a struggle and will likely remain an issue for some time.

Demographic changes in the sector have meant a lot of new hiring, but downward pressure on wages in the public sector has made recruitment difficult.

New members must be trained in modern health and safety processes no matter if they work in an office, at home, on the lines, or in thermal, hydro, and nuclear power generation. CUPE locals spend significant resources making sure workers are safe on the job and understand the role of the union and the members’ role in “keeping the lights on.”

Bargaining stable, long-term employment

CUPE members in the electricity sector expect to be subject to continued pressure to give up their defined benefit pension plans, and switch to target benefit or defined contribution plans. Campaigns outlining the importance of these benefits to a healthy and sustainable workforce continue.

Contracting out and the increase of temporary hires remain issues at bargaining tables across the sector. Ensuring adequate employment in the CUPE agreements is essential to sustain quality work during emergencies.

Climate change

CUPE locals also have language in their collective agreements so that workers can lend assistance across Canada and around the world during electricity crises caused by weather-related and other events. With the rise of climate change-related crises, electricity workers from around the world are needed more and more to support communities facing these crises.

CUPE locals are on the front lines of the fight against climate change. Our members are in regular engagement with government on policy discussions regarding pricing and taxing carbon, investment in mitigating climate change, regulating new generation, expansion of generation to meet the electricity needs of the future, and critiques of failed electricity energy policies.

A green energy future is an electrical energy future, but Canada needs to invest heavily in new green generation to make sure that future generation is non-carbon emitting.

COVID-19 and remote work

Many workers in the energy sector have adapted to new working arrangements – including working from home – during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Collective agreement language dealing with all the aspects of remote work negotiated in the electricity sector was used as template language across the labour movement.

In most areas of the country energy sector workers did not face layoffs, however, in Manitoba, the Pallister government used COVID-19 to provide cover for their ideological attacks on public workers, claiming that layoffs of Manitoba Hydro were necessary to help the government respond to the pandemic.

CUPE Manitoba locals continue to fight and win against the privatization of any part of Manitoba Hydro or moves to lay off members.

Campaigns

Ongoing CUPE local campaigns include health and safety, campaigns for public ownership; a plan for funding a fair and sustainable transition to a low carbon economy through calls for a Just Transition; and pushing governments to plan for succession in the industry through training and recruitment.

CUPE works with allies to keep energy public all over the world. Our international electricity campaigns support public ownership of the energy sector, push for action to address climate change and expand international coordination of energy sector policy.

CUPE works directly with energy unions in other countries, including the Electrical Trades Union of Australia, Mexican utility workers and the CGT in France to support and learn from their militant campaigns against contracting out and wage suppression. CUPE also works through the sector Committee of Public Services International and other global union organizations like IndustriALL, Right to Energy – SOS Future, and Trade Unions for Energy Democracy.