The purpose of this paper is to examine the bargaining agenda of selected major Canadian unions on women’s issues and the effectiveness of their efforts towards incorporating these issues into their collective agreements. The first section highlights the union agenda and the common provisions the unions have been pursuing at the collective bargaining table. The second section analyzes the frequency of the collective agreement clauses on women’s issues overall and of selected unions. The final section summarizes the finding and their implications. The Appendix provides a profile of labour organizations included in the study.

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Industrial Relations Association at Kingston, Ontario, June 2-4, 1991.