Biggest strikes in Quebec since 1972

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MONTREAL—Leaders of Quebec’s Common Front of public sector unions and the provincial Liberal govern­ ment of Premier Philippe Couillard announced a tenta­ tive agreement on Dec. 17. The deal covers wages and pensions. Working conditions are negotiated separately by sector. Grouped in the Common Front are the unions representing government employees affiliated with the major union centrals, notably, the CSN (Confédération des syndicats nationaux) and the FTQ (Fédération des travailleurs du Québec), as well as several non-affiliated unions.

The agreement came on the heels of a one-day general strike involving over 400,000 workers of the Common Front and affecting schools, health-care facilities and government services across the province. While pick­ et lines were set up at work sites, 40,000 marched in downtown Montreal and another 20,000 in Quebec City.

The Dec. 9 strike was the biggest since 1972. That’s when the original Common Front launched a work stop­ page of 200,000 government employees, which in some communities saw strike committees commandeer radio stations and take charge of government services, and ended only after union leaders were imprisoned.

Preceding the December strike was an autumn punctu­ ated by big mobilizations. A mass union demonstration in Montreal on Oct. 3 opposed the austerity agenda of the Liberal regime. The Common Front launched a series of rotating strikes. Community organizations, students, the feminist movement, and climate justice activists also took to the streets. Teachers camped outside the Minis­ ter of Education’s office, picketed schools, and marched in their thousands, supported by a parents’ group dedi­ cated to defending “our public schools.”

As negotiations wore on, public opinion shifted per­ ceptibly against the government. The workers’ demands are seen by many as protecting the integrity of Quebec’s public health care and educational institutions. There is sympathy as well for the underpaid and largely female workforce who keep government services running. Av­ erage pay for government employees in Quebec lags 8% behind their private-sector counterparts.

Support for the Liberal austerity drive has also been undermined by the government’s obvious class bias and hypocrisy. A $1.2 billion bailout of Bombardier, Quebec’s flagship in the global corporate world, and a 34% pay increase awarded to the province’s doctors were an­ nounced during negotiations with the Common Front!

Both the union leaders and the government, for sep­ arate but convergent reasons, wished to avoid a pro­ longed stand-off and the risk of an escalating confron­ tation. A repetition on a grander scale of Quebec’s epic student strike of 2012 is something both parties would prefer to avoid.

10 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2016 The agreement in principle was widely hailed in the media. It was billed as an 11th-hour “miracle” that, thanks to compromise on both sides, would meet the government’s austerity targets while at the same time “avoiding [sic] the impoverishment” of its employees, to No Reconciliation without Justice What will come of the massive report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated the cultural genocide inflicted by the Canadian fed­ eral government on indigenous peoples? Will its 94 specific recommendations bear any fruit?

The TRC deserves praise for raising awareness of the horrendous suffering of the 150,000 indigenous children who were torn from their communities between 1883 and 1996 and placed in residential schools. As many as 6,000 of them died of malnu­ trition, tuberculosis, influenza and other diseases.

Thousands were buried, forgotten, in unmarked graves. The survivors had to live with the painful memories of physical, emotional and sexual abuse that was rampant in the federally-funded, churchrun schools.

In 2008 then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the “great harm” caused by Ottawa’s racist campaign “to take the Indian out of the child,”

suppressing native languages, culture and identity.

The TRC justly demands much more than an of­ quote the FTQ’s chief negotiator.

A closer assessment indicates that compromise came overwhelmingly from the union side. Salary increases will be limited to under 2% annually for the next five years, and this after years of retrenchment.

The agreement reached after a 13-hour secret session in the office of Martin Coiteux, Quebec’s President du Conseil du trésor (effectively the Finance Ministry), was not exactly a charade. But it has the character of shad­ ow-boxing between two “frères ennemis” (brother ene­ mies), as some in Quebec term the relationship between the union tops and the employers.

It remains to be seen how easy it will be to sell this package to the ranks. Already there are signs of dis­ content. Delegates to the council of the FSSS (Fédéra­ tion de la santé et des services sociaux, Federation of health and social service workers), representing about a quarter of the Common Front members, have recom­ mended rejection. Likewise opposed to the agreement, even though outside the Common Front, are leaders of the FAE (Fédération autonome de l’enseignement, Au­ tonomous Federation of Teachers) representing 34,000 Montreal-area teachers.

Voting by members of the unions will take place early in the New Year. Rejection of their leaders’ advice will take courage and would pose the question of how to take the struggle forward. In particular, it would raise the perspective of a general or social strike, since noth­ ing less will be required to defeat the Liberal govern­ ment. n ficial apology. Its call for “mutual respect” is em­ bodied in the idea of a nation-to-nation relation­ ship between Canada and 1.4 million indigenous peoples. That means honouring native land rights, and providing funding for health, housing and edu­ cation.

Fulfilment of those goals, not as an act of charity, but on a foundation of indigenous self-government, faces sharp resistance from the Canadian establish­ ment. Not only from pipeline companies, energy resource industries and mining firms, staunch re­ sistance will come from the ruling rich as a class, and from the state that guards their interests.

Mass protest actions of the kind initiated by Idle No More put the issue of missing and murdered in­ digenous women onto the political agenda. Many more such actions, in partnership with labour unions, social justice and environmental move­ ments, will be required.

In fact, the re-distribution of wealth and power necessary to end the present colonial arrangement entails nothing less than a revolution to abolish monopoly business control of the economy. — B.W.