Canada’s public servants are sick and tired of being sick and tired. A group of 120,000 federal public servants in Canada voted in favor of entering a legal strike position on Wednesday, with an additional 35,000 workers set to join them today. The bargaining groups under the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) could strike at just about any time. The Canadian public service employs roughly 336,000 people. Union leaders and observers warn that strikes could disrupt a number of state functions, including border crossings, employment insurance, passport applications, airport delays, and export hiccups. The government was quick to share a list of “essential services” that would not be affected by labor action.

Wages are at the center of the labor dispute. The Treasury Board bargaining group, a subset of the workers in a strike position, want wages to keep up with inflation. The government had offered an average bump of 2.06 percent over four years while workers asked for 4.5 percent. Average consumer price index inflation was 6.8 percent in 2022, a huge jump over 2021 and the biggest in four decades. Inflation is beginning to cool now. On April 12, the Bank of Canada held its interest rate at 4.5 percent. But the affordability crisis continues, particularly for costs such as food and housing, and workers have been taking effective pay cuts while higher prices eat away at their purchasing power.

Canadians ought to stand behind the public service and support their battle for higher wages that keep pace with rising costs. For decades, there has been a war against public servants and the government in general — a neoliberal crusade to undermine state capacity and public support for things we do together, outside of the market. The battles have been fought throughout the Global North, in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere. People are told the state is the problem; the market is the solution. They are inundated with media and political messaging that denigrates public servants, casting them as lazy, entitled, privileged workers who return little value on the tax dollars spent on them. It’s bullshit, but it’s persistent.