It looks very much like Ontario premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (PC) will win another majority government in the imminent provincial election. On the campaign trail, Ford has attempted to reinvent himself as a supporter of working people, and some unions seem to have bought the act.

As the election campaign moves into its final week, Ford has collected the endorsement of four unions — IBB, IBEW, IUPAT, and LiUNA. These construction unions have been won over by Ford’s promises to build more public transit and infrastructure and to clear the way for more housing construction to deal with the province’s housing crisis.

While the construction unions have always been more conservative than the rest of the labor movement, this level of endorsement is both unprecedented and deeply at odds with organized labor’s attitude toward Ford when he was first elected as premier in 2018. Several months after coming into office, Ford’s government repealed a number of progressive labor law reforms instituted in the dying days of the previous Liberal government. These included an increase of the minimum wage to $15 — rising to $15.50 in October 2022 — as well as paid sick days.