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WORKERS VOTE – NL ELECTION 2025

Welcome to the labour movement’s election hub! 

The 2025 Newfoundland and Labrador provincial election presents a critical opportunity to advance workers’ rights and build a fairer and more just province for all – where no one gets left behind.   

This microsite serves as a worker-centered resource for election information from a labour perspective, including party positions on key issues, voting information, and analysis of platforms and announcements.  

With the election called for October 14, 2025, your engagement has never been more important. 

Get informed. Get engaged. Vote.  

NOTE: This microsite will be updated throughout the election as new information becomes available. Please check back often for the latest developments in the 2025 provincial election. 

PARTY RESPONSES TO THE ‘WORKERS’ VOTE’ QUESTIONNAIRE 

Read the full responses and analysis – click on the image or – CLICK HERE

GENERAL ELECTION AND VOTER INFORMATION LINKS: 

The OFFICIAL source of information regarding the election (voting information, registration, polling places, advanced polls, etc.) is ElectionsNL.  

KEY DATES: 

Event  Date  Importance for Members 
Election Day  October 14  Final day to cast your ballot 
Advance Polls  October 7 Alternative voting opportunity 
Candidate Deadline  September 23 Date when all candidates are confirmed 

LABOUR’S PRIORITY ISSUES FOR THE 2025 ELECTION  

The provincial election is a pivotal moment to build a Newfoundland and Labrador that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few. Our movement is fighting for comprehensive plans from the parties that put workers, families, and communities first. Here are some of our core priorities: 

  1. Stronger Labour Laws: Card Check & Anti-Scab Legislation
    We demand modernized laws that protect the right to organize and strike. This includes implementing card check certification for a fairer unionization process and passing strong anti-scab legislation to ban replacement workers, ensuring employers negotiate in good faith.
  2. Workplace Health & Safety
    Every worker has the fundamental right to return home safe at the end of the day. We need strengthened occupational health and safety regulations and increased enforcement to hold employers accountable and prevent tragedies.
  3. Protecting and Strengthening Public Services
    Our public healthcare, education, and services are the bedrock of our society. We oppose their privatization and call for stable, increased funding to ensure they are strong, accessible, and delivered by well-supported and properly resourced public sector workers.
  4. Economic Justice and Pay Equity
    No one working full-time should live in poverty. With rising costs, workers are struggling to keep up. A fair economy must provide wages, benefits, and supports that allow people to live with dignity. Wages must reflect the true cost of living. Furthermore, strong pay equity legislation must be enacted and enforced to end the discriminatory wage gap. Parties must also commit to additional measures, beyond wages, to help ease the burden of the rising cost of living, such as implementing the national pharmacare program, increasing income supports, and strengthening the social safety net.  
  5. Affordable and Accessible Housing
    Housing is a human right. We need a provincial strategy that includes major investments in non-market and social housing and wrap-around supports to ensure everyone has a safe, affordable, and dignified place to live.
  6. Universal, Accessible Childcare
    While $10-a-day childcare was a start, we must now improve it. We advocate for expanding access to all families and communities, and crucially, improving benefits and working conditions for Early Childhood Educators to ensure a stable, high-quality system for children and educators alike.
  7. A Just Transition to a Green Economy
    As our economy evolves, workers must be at the heart of the plan. Workers need a Just Transition framework that creates good, unionized green jobs, provides retraining opportunities, and supports workers and communities affected by economic shifts, leaving no one behind.
  8. Advancing Economic and Social Justice
    We are calling on leaders and their parties to commit to concrete actions to build a more equitable province. This means enacting policies that reduce poverty and inequality, strengthen social safety nets, and advance the rights of all workers, including those who are most marginalized.
  9. A Worker-Led Workforce Strategy
    To build a resilient economy ready for major projects, we need a workforce strategy developed in consultation with workers. Any meaningful workforce strategy must include significant public investment in education, our public University and College systems, and union training facilities to ensure we have a workforce that is trained and ready for the work that lies ahead. Workers will need supports and funding to access the retraining/upskilling required.

While major projects represent significant opportunities, we cannot focus solely on large-scale developments to the detriment of the broader workforce needs of our province. A comprehensive labour market strategy must invest in training workers for longer-term, projects, manufacturing, and public services that form the backbone of our communities. 

A strong, fair, and just economy requires preparing our province for opportunities of tomorrow through a worker-led approach.

10. Ensuring Worker and Community Benefits from Major Projects

Projects must benefit the people of Newfoundland and Labrador first:

  • Guarantee Good Jobs: Enforce the highest labour and benefits standards to create union jobs with equity provisions. 
  • Implement Strong Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs): strong, enforceable CBAs to ensure local hiring, local procurement, and direct community investment from all major projects. 
  • Strengthen Indigenous Consultation: Require free, prior, and informed consent from Indigenous peoples, respecting their rights and territories. 
  • Prioritize Local Hiring and Procurement: Enshrine “Buy Canada” and “Buy Clean” policies to ensure public projects create local jobs, use domestic supply chains, and advance climate goals. 
  • Protect Existing Regulations: Ensure no project is exempt from federal or provincial regulations that safeguard workers’ rights, environmental standards, and community well-being. 

SAMPLE QUESTIONS YOU CAN ASK CANDIDATES

1. Workers’ Rights, Health and Safety, and Legislative Protections 

Workers need modern legislative protections to ensure fairness and safety. 

  • Will your party commit to introducing anti-scab legislation to prevent the use of replacement workers during strikes and lockouts? 
  • Will your party commit to the re-implementation of card-check certification? 
  • What are your plans to strengthen and enforce workplace health and safety regulations? 
  • Will your party commit to implementing paid sick days for all workers?  
  • Will your party increase the income replacement rate for workers compensation which has been recommended by the statutory review process?  
  • What actions would your government take to address increasing incidents of violence in the workplace? 

2. Strengthening and Protecting Public Services 

Strong public services are the essential foundation upon which a prosperous economy and a healthy and equitable society are built for everyone in our province.  The contracting out and privatization of public services erodes quality, reduces accountability, and undermines good, unionized jobs.  

  • Will your party commit to ending the privatization of public services? If yes, please provide concrete actions that your government will take to end privatization?  If not, why not? 
  • If elected, what concrete measures would you take to strengthen public services in our province? 
  1. Tariff Response and Economic Resiliency 
  • What specific, actionable policies will your party implement to shield Newfoundland and Labrador’s workers, industries, and communities from the negative impacts of U.S. tariffs, such as supply chain disruptions, rising costs, and retaliatory trade measures?  
  • How will your party ensure our economy becomes more resilient and less vulnerable to external trade shocks? 

4. Economic Justice and the Cost of Living 

With rising costs, workers are struggling to keep up. A fair economy must provide wages and benefits that allow people to live with dignity. 

  • How will your government ensure that the minimum wage becomes a living wage? 
  • Beyond minimum wage, what policies will you introduce to help all workers keep up with the rising cost of living? 
  • Will your party commit to signing on to the national Pharmacare program as soon as possible following the election?  

5. Strengthening Public Healthcare and Education 

  • What is your plan to recruit, retain, and fairly compensate healthcare workers to address critical staffing shortages, improve retention and recruitment, and improve outcomes for patients and residents? 
  • Will your party commit to strengthening and protecting Newfoundland and Labrador’s public, universal healthcare system by banning for-profit delivery of public health services? 
  • How will you ensure the education system (including post-secondary) has the resources and staffing complement necessary to provide the highest quality education? 

6. Ensuring Local Benefits and Good Jobs 

  • What concrete legislative and policy measures will your party implement to ensure that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador are the primary beneficiaries of major projects? Will you mandate the use of strong, enforceable Community Benefit Agreements that prioritize local hiring, ensure good union jobs with fair wages, include equity provisions for underrepresented groups, and require investment in local supply chains? 

7. Building a More Just and Equitable Province for All  

True progress requires a commitment to justice and equity for all. 

  • How will your government actively implement the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission within the provincial jurisdiction? 
  • Will your party commit to altering the Occupational Health and Safety regulations to mandate employers to provide menstrual products for workers?  
  • Given the urgent need to address the gender pay gap and ensure economic justice for all workers, what is your party’s plan to finally implement and enforce the Pay Equity and Pay Transparency Act? 
  • What is your party’s plan to not only create new childcare spaces but also to recruit, retain, and fairly compensate the early childhood educators required to make this expansion sustainable? 

8. Transparency and Good Governance 

  • How will your government ensure transparency and accountability in its decision-making processes, especially regarding public finances and contracts?

9. Just Transition: Ensuring No Worker or Community is Left Behind

  • Will your party commit to legislating a Just Transition Act that guarantees training, income support, and new unionized job creation for workers in transitioning industries, and ensure workers and unions have a direct seat at the planning table? 
  • What specific, immediate investments will your government make in Newfoundland and Labrador to create good jobs in renewable energy and energy efficiency? 
  • What is your plan to address the impacts of climate change in workplaces and communities (e.g. Heat stress, extreme weather, wildfires…)? 

OFFICIAL PARTY PLATFORMS 

NDP Platform – HERE

Liberal Platform – HERE

PC Party Platform – HERE

GET INVOLVED. GET ACTIVE.  

The labour movement’s strength comes from workers like you. Here’s how you can get engaged in this election: 

  • Talk to co-workers about labour’s priorities and where the parties stand on issue important to the working class 
  • Attend all-candidates meetings/debates/forums in your district 
  • Ask questions about workers’ rights and protections 
  • Share labour analysis and party questionnaire responses with your networks