After only eight days of strike, eight days without pay, women represented by the Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE) who work in our schools were already testifying in the media about their financial problems. Requests for food aid were pouring in, a Facebook group to facilitate donations had been created.
A special education technician who already frequented food banks before the labor dispute told my colleague Caroline Touzin how she scrapes the bottom line1. She started baking her own bread and participating in collective kitchens. Her teenagers are hungry. She too, by the way.
Two days later, at Everybody talks about it, we learned that teachers also lacked money for food. Despite their salary being significantly higher than that of support staff.
“We, since the start of the strike, have had around a hundred teachers who have registered for our services,” revealed Jean-Sébastien Patrice, general director of MultiCaf, a community organization which helps people to low income to eat better.
From the start, two teachers had predicted the financial problems caused by the incomprehensible and irresponsible absence of a strike fund. They created a Facebook group to anonymously match good Samaritans with teachers whose budgets no longer balance.
Around 90% of the requests received on the “Mutual aid for teachers on strike” page concern food, one of the creators, Marjorie Guilbault, told me. Others want gas, clothes. The group has 12,000 members.
In a sign of the times, the United Steelworkers made a donation to support the strikers of $100,000… in the form of grocery gift cards.
I don’t remember another strike where the problems of feeding were raised so quickly and so extensively in the public space. YOU ?
The testimony of teacher Geneviève Savard, which can be read on the Radio-Canada website, is particularly disturbing and reveals a much broader issue than the non-existence of a strike fund.2.
“I have a really good career. I went to university. It’s a job that I love, except that I can’t do it. Then at the slightest thing like that, where my salary is cut, I call it crossing the desert. » She is one of those who asked for a helping hand in the “Mutual aid for teachers on strike” group.
When you spend four years at university, then get hired by the government and are lucky enough to have a good “ job steady » with a golden retirement plan, we can’t imagine having to ask for charity one day to eat… between two paychecks.
This is precisely the problem, even for strikers with a decent salary: the time between the two paychecks has lengthened.
However, in Quebec, 38% of workers live from paycheck to paycheck, according to a Léger study carried out at the end of August. This portion is lower than nationally (47%), but still worrying. What is also striking in the statistics is the gap between men (42%) and women (51%) who wait for their Thursday paycheck to pay the bills (Canadian data).
This essentially female strike is very revealing of financial precariousness, of the lack of room for maneuver at the slightest glitch.
Of course, requests for help and testimonies of insecurity demonstrate the importance of this famous cushion of three to six months of fixed expenses (housing, groceries, car loan, electricity, telecommunications) that financial advisors suggest. But above all, these cries from the heart illustrate how difficult this advice is to follow for many people, especially women.
Firstly because their salaries are lower than those of men by around 12%, according to Statistics Canada3.
Imagine, no less than 46% of working women in Quebec have an annual income of less than $30,000, which makes saving almost impossible.
Debt, in many cases, becomes a way of life. This group includes many school staff: daycare technicians, social work and special education technicians and secretarial staff. Their average income is $26,484, according to their union.
It must be admitted, women do not negotiate their working conditions as forcefully as men, as Patrick Lagacé wrote so well in a recent column4.
Not only are women’s incomes lower, but in 77% of single-parent families, they are also the ones who financially support the children. They then have an average income of $1,091 per week, while solo men can count on $1,514.
And what about mandatory alimony in all of this? You still need to have an ex who agrees to go to mediation so that an amount can be fixed. You still need to have the means to hire a lawyer to go before a judge. The ex still has to have income declared in accordance with reality. The amount still needs to be reviewed periodically. It is still necessary that each discussion about money does not poison the family climate. It is still necessary that…
You will understand that it is far from simple and automatic, unfortunately. Moreover, it is high time to improve the system so that all parents contribute financially to the needs of their offspring according to their abilities. For the moment, its flaws mainly cause women to suffer.