To Protect Workers From Inflation, Unions Want to Bring Back the COLA Clause
Cost-of-living adjustment clauses — which protect wages against inflation — used to be standard fare in collective agreements. By fighting to bring the COLA clause back, Canadian workers are refusing to bear the brunt of spiraling costs.
Garment workers demand pay raise while parading down Spadina Avenue in Toronto, Canada. (Toronto Star / Getty Images)
“No COLA? No Beer!” read the signs of striking British Columbia General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) workers on the picket line this past summer. With inflation at highs we haven’t seen this century, employees in BC’s public sector — including clerks at the province’s liquor stores — reached an impasse at the bargaining table over the rise in cost of living. What they wanted was a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) clause, a guarantee that their wages would keep pace with the tidal wave of inflation.
As inflation is seized upon by the capitalist class to make everyone’s lives miserable, unions should fight to ensure that workers aren’t thrown under the bus. A raise is meant to be a raise — if it can’t keep up with increases to costs of living, it’s not actually a raise.
What Is a COLA Clause?
A COLA clause is a piece of language in a union’s collective agreement which requires that the rate of inflation is taken into account when wage rates are set. There are multiple kinds of COLA clauses. They can link a percentage wage increase to a percentage inflation increase, or they can link a dollars-and-cents amount to a change in the inflation index. Or they can do a combination of the two. Some only come into effect once inflation hits a certain level, others are always in effect. They can be very confusing.
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