Montreal city workers rock austerity bosses
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By M. GALLANT On Aug. 19 a large contingent of mu nicipal workers stormed Montreal City Hall and disrupted a council session. As the majority of city councilors present fled the scene, preferring to avoid the clear consequences of their austerity plans, firefighters threw water about, and angry workers unceremoniously dumped papers from desks. The police were called, but never came.
Outraged pundits and bourgeois me dia bosses tried to spin the story as a case of out-of-control unions and self ish workers. Orders to disperse the protest, it seems, were not received, and were never issued by police HQ or dispatch.
So, why did the Montreal police, so eager and brutal in their suppression 8 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 2014 of the 2012 Quebec student strikes and demonstrators, stand idly by this time?
The answer is simple—pensions. Spe cifically, the police acted in defense of their own pensions. As warlords and emperors have discovered throughout history, the one force you must never alienate is the one you use to impose your will.
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre, it seems, didn’t get the memo. So how did Coderre, a popular figure widely compared to Jean Drapeau (the mayor credited with Expo ‘67 and with ush ering in Montreal’s rise to prominence as a “world-class” city, from the 1960s to the 1980s), allow things to turn so sour?
Enter Bill 3, a provincial government austerity law, for which Mayor Coderre is not responsible, except for his active support and encouragement of it. Pre sented on June 12, and currently still being debated in the Quebec National Assembly in Quebec City, the bill paves the way for huge cuts, particularly to public sector employees’ pension funds. It’s in the interest of “encouraging fiscal health,” its sponsors claim.
The bill would reopen all public sector union collective agreements and pen sion provisions, and subject them to an actuarial valuation. Further, if time-lim ited negotiations and conciliations fail, the government would be able to ap point an arbitrator who could impose a settlement.
Municipal workers, amongst others, want to keep the pensions issue off the table. Theirs is a serious bid to re sist concessions. It sets a very welcome example for public and private sector workers across the Canadian state.
Arbitrators appointed under Bill 3 would be required to look at the gov ernment’s “ability to pay,” but not its ability to tax big business and the rich.
Keep in mind that Liberal Quebec Pre mier Philippe Couillard pays no income taxes on his offshore tax haven invest ments, nor during his four-year tenure as a private neurosurgeon in the des potic petrostate of Saudi Arabia.
As we go to press, media barons are baying for blood. Inquiries have been launched to look into the police broth erhood, the firefighters’ union, and public sector workers’ organizations. “Fines!” enraged talk-show hosts howl. “Discipline!” cry the newspapers. “PUN ISHMENT!” demand the elite against the dogs who dare to bite their masters’ hands.
What punishment, and for whom, re mains to be seen, as the Quebec labour movement rises to this challenge. n