USW donates $100,000 to striking public sector workers. Affiliated with the FTQ, the union will distribute grocery gift cards to help a “vast majority of women […] who keeps public services at arm’s length. A first for this union.
1000 cards worth $100 will be distributed to strikers in need.
The Quebec director of the Steelworkers, Dominic Lemieux, was alongside the strikers at the Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-la-Salle primary school, in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, to make the announcement Monday morning.
“It’s extremely important to support the workers who fully support Quebec,” said Mr. Lemieux. “It’s nonsense to work and be forced to go to food banks,” he added.
The Steelworkers Union is affiliated with the FTQ. It brings together more than 60,000 workers in the private sector, “miners, security guards, beneficiary attendants, secretaries, handlers, welders, technicians, mechanics, sailors,” we read on the union’s website.
The president of the Quebec Union of Service Employees, Sylvie Nelson, was in tears Monday morning.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Sylvie Nelson (left)
“I’ve been campaigning for around forty years and this is the first time I’ve seen the private sector gang offer us this in solidarity. My members who go to food banks… Are you asking me if that affects me? Yes. It’s amazing,” says Mme Nelson.
Requests for food aid on picket lines have quadrupled, says Pierrick Choinière-Lapointe, executive director of the Union of Professional and Office Employees (SEPB-Québec).
It represents daycare educators, secretaries, student supervisors, special education technicians, whose average salary is around $30,000 per year.
The union members of the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE) are in their 13th yeare day of unlimited general strike. On Saturday, they were able to take advantage of the generosity of the public to receive food and grocery store gift certificates on Saturday following donation drives organized by their colleagues across the province.
With Vincent Larin