{"id":100487,"date":"2025-04-03T12:31:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T16:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=100487"},"modified":"2025-04-03T16:43:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T20:43:01","slug":"opinion-larry-savage-and-daniel-westlake-discuss-impact-of-union-election-endorsements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2025\/04\/opinion-larry-savage-and-daniel-westlake-discuss-impact-of-union-election-endorsements\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Larry Savage and Daniel Westlake discuss impact of union election endorsements"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece written by Larry Savage, Professor of Labour Studies at Brock University, and Daniel Westlake, Assistant Professor of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nearly\u00a0one in three\u00a0workers in Canada is covered by a union contract, making union members a potentially powerful voting bloc at election time. It should therefore come as little surprise that federal parties have been making overt efforts to secure endorsements from labour unions and the votes of their members as election day nears.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Canadian Union of Public Employees,\u00a0United Steelworkers\u00a0and\u00a0Amalgamated Transit Union\u00a0have already declared support for the New Democratic Party (NDP), while the Boilermakers union has\u00a0endorsed the Conservatives. All parties are expected to pick up more union endorsements before election day.<\/p>\n

But do union endorsements actually make a difference at the ballot box?<\/p>\n

Our forthcoming survey-based research suggests that while most union members in Canada indicate their voting preferences are not swayed by union endorsements, satisfaction with one\u2019s union significantly enhances the likelihood they\u2019ll support union-endorsed candidates in federal, provincial and local elections.<\/p>\n

Shifts in party-union relations<\/strong><\/p>\n

The NDP was viewed as the political arm of the labour movement and secured the lion\u2019s share of union resources and endorsements for much of its history. However, as ties between the NDP and unions have loosened, so too have unions\u2019 political allegiances.<\/p>\n

In recent years, unions in Canada have made political endorsements that don\u2019t align with traditional patterns. For example, after a decade of backing the provincial Liberals, many\u00a0construction unions\u00a0endorsed Conservative Premier Doug Ford\u2019s re-election in the 2022 Ontario provincial election.<\/p>\n

Although most other unions endorsed the opposition NDP, Ford\u2019s union support garnered significant attention and was presented as an impressive game-changer\u00a0by the media\u00a0and\u00a0political pundits.<\/p>\n

In the 2025 Ontario election campaign, Ford used his commanding lead in the polls and a transactional brand of politics to\u00a0lock down endorsements\u00a0from an even broader cross-section of the union movement, winning additional support from firefighters, a Toronto-based\u00a0hotel worker union,\u00a0police unions\u00a0and three large\u00a0Unifor locals.<\/p>\n

The union endorsements were symbolically significant for the Conservative campaign because they\u00a0fractured labour movement opposition\u00a0to Ford and provided pro-worker cover for a government with a decidedly\u00a0mixed record\u00a0on labour rights.<\/p>\n

The Unifor endorsements, in particular, raised eyebrows because Canada\u2019s largest private sector union had long championed\u00a0anti-Conservative strategic voting, backing a mix of Liberal, NDP and Bloc candidates in election campaigns over the past decade.<\/p>\n

These shifts have encouraged Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to appeal more to\u00a0blue-collar union members, especially in male-dominated industries, to broaden his party\u2019s working-class support.<\/p>\n

The Conservatives have also no doubt been inspired by the success of United States President Donald Trump this regard.<\/p>\n

In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the vast majority of unions endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris over Trump. But\u00a0exit polls\u00a0indicated Trump still managed to win an impressive 45 per cent of the votes from union households, highlighting a potential disconnect between union leaders and their members on the question of endorsements.<\/p>\n

The influence of union endorsements<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not all union endorsements carry the same weight, but they can play a strategically critical role in election campaigns depending on the dynamic.<\/p>\n

Our survey-based research, to be published in an upcoming volume of\u00a0Labour\/Le Travail, reveals that while a small majority of union members in Canada feel union endorsements won\u2019t impact their vote, such endorsements do modestly influence a good number of union members.<\/p>\n

Outside of Qu\u00e9bec, 37 per cent of surveyed union members report being \u201csomewhat\u201d or \u201cmuch more likely\u201d to vote for union-endorsed candidates. In Qu\u00e9bec, the figure is slightly lower at 27 per cent. Conversely, only a small portion of members (11 per cent in the rest of Canada and 13 per cent in Qu\u00e9bec) indicate a union endorsement will make them less likely to vote for their union\u2019s preferred candidate.<\/p>\n

Importantly, workers who indicated satisfaction with their union in the workplace are significantly more likely support union-endorsed candidates in election campaigns.<\/p>\n

Satisfaction with one\u2019s union matters much more to whether union members respond to an endorsement favourably than demographic factors such as age, gender, income or education level.<\/p>\n

The survey results also suggest that union type does not make a significant difference in assessing the influence of endorsements on union members\u2019 voting intentions. Members of public-sector unions are no more likely to respond favourably to union endorsements than members of private-sector unions, nor are members of construction unions or members of NDP-affiliated unions.<\/p>\n

Lessons for parties and unions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even with modest impacts on voting preferences, union endorsements may prove decisive in closely contested elections, especially in communities with large numbers of union voters.<\/p>\n

For unions to maximize their political influence, however, they must first earn their members\u2019 trust through effective workplace representation. Building this trust enhances the impact of endorsements by increasing member support for union-endorsed candidates.<\/p>\n

In short, having strongly supported unions in the workplace helps to build strong unions in the political arena with improved capacity to deliver union members\u2019 votes.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Larry Savage, Professor of Labour Studies at Brock University, and Daniel Westlake, Assistant Professor of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, recently published a piece in The Conversation about the impact of union endorsements on election campaigns. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,38],"tags":[110,522,4358,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100487"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100495,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100487\/revisions\/100495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}