A “battle of public opinion” is emerging between the Legault government and the unions representing half a million state employees who will strike next week, foresee four experts joined by The duty. It remains to be seen which arguments Quebecers will be most sensitive to.
The 420,000 union members of the Common Front, which brings together four union associations, will strike on Monday to demand better salary and working conditions in the education and health sectors, mainly. This strike will take place from midnight to 10:30 a.m. in primary and secondary schools and from midnight to noon in the CEGEPs concerned. This will notably delay the arrival in class of students attending schools in several regions of the province, where school transportation will also be suspended. In the health sector, tens of thousands of employees will also strike, but they will have to continue to offer essential services to the population.
Then 80,000 workers from the Interprofessional Health Federation of Quebec (FIQ) will be on strike on November 8 and 9, while the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE) will launch an indefinite general strike starting on November 23. if negotiations fail with Quebec by then. A vast majority of FIQ members (95%) also expressed themselves in favor of a walkout which could go as far as an indefinite general strike.
Risks of wear
In this context, “a battle of public opinion” is emerging between the unions and the government of Quebec, who are trying as best they can to negotiate the renewal of the collective agreements uniting them, notes Bernard Motulsky, professor in the Department of Social Communication and public at UQAM. “The risk is that people feel disrupted” in their daily lives, which could affect popular sympathy for union associations, the expert foresees.
The repercussions on Quebecers of the November 6 strike, although limited, could still make an impression, notes lecturer in the Department of Political Science at UQAM and political analyst André Lamoureux. “Any public sector strike has an impact on users, obviously. So, that means that, in schools, there will be no classes; the parents will have to organize themselves with the means at hand so that someone takes care [de la garde des enfants] and sometimes they will be required to take time off from work as a substitute” for child care, he said.
However, this strike will not be sufficient in itself to turn public opinion, the majority of which is favorable to its cause, believes Mr. Lamoureux. In September, a survey commissioned from the firm SOM by the common union front reported 87% of respondents in favor of improving the working conditions of state employees and almost as many Quebecers believing that their salaries should “at least be indexed to the cost of living”.
“But if a strike lasted a long time, like the FAE which could carry out an unlimited general strike, that could create a lot of dissatisfaction among parents,” warns André Lamoureux in the same breath.
Currently, the Common Front is demanding a 20% salary increase over three years for the public service employees it represents, an offer that the Legault government “will never accept,” the expert believes. The latter therefore believes that the risk that this strike movement will drag on is very real if the union community does not put water in its wine. “If the unions cling to their demands without negotiating and without making a downward movement, it can quickly turn against them,” warns Mr. Lamoureux.
“In a context where people are having difficulty everywhere because of their salary, inflation, difficulty in obtaining services, there would be a risk that public opinion would turn against the public service if the strike continued », continues the professor. The government would then have more latitude to consider adopting a special law to require state employees to return to work, as it did in 1983 to abruptly end a three-week strike. in the education sector in Quebec.
“The strategy is that, if we manage to obtain a certain sympathy for the union position, we have the weapon of public opinion. But conversely, it can also be useful to the government when there are strike movements which do not achieve consensus,” also indicates assistant professor of public and political communication at the National School of Public Administration Philippe Dubois. The latter gives the example of the 2015 student strike which, at the end of the year, faced opposition from a majority of Quebecers, placing the liberal government of Philippe Couillard in a position of strength.
At the same time, the basic principle of a strike is to “disrupt the daily lives of service users” as a negotiating weapon. In this context, we have seen the unions, in recent days, “insist on the fact that we do not want to take people hostage, but that we are there out of necessity and that we are asking the population to “be united”, notes Philippe Dubois.
Well-defined arguments
In this struggle, the two parties have refined the arguments that they will undoubtedly continue to hammer home in the media and in the public square in the coming days, note the experts consulted. On the one hand, the unions argue that at a time when their working conditions have deteriorated in recent years, particularly due to the pandemic, Quebec is not offering them salary increases taking into account anticipated inflation in the coming years. The government, for its part, holds the card of the difficult economic context which allows it to emphasize the importance of respecting “the ability of Quebecers to pay” in the indexation of the salaries of public service employees.
“This is an argument that can be useful within the population, which is also struggling with managing the impact of inflation on the cost of living,” notes Thierry Giasson, full professor in the Department of Science. policy of Laval University, which notes that both the government and the union community currently have “very good arguments to hammer out”.
This strike will nevertheless take place in a context where the Legault government has seen its support weaken in public opinion in recent months. A poll conducted by the Léger firm reported last Wednesday a drop of four percentage points in voting intentions for the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) in one month, to the benefit of the Parti Québécois, which made gains of the same amount. order.
“It is undoubtedly a huge gift for the union centers and union leaders, who see that François Legault’s honeymoon is over,” says Mr. Giasson, in reference to this survey. In this context, unions can begin their mobilization “knowing that popular support for the government is crumbling,” adds the professor.