This text is part of the special section Unionism
Union action must adapt to the realities of workers who are diversifying, experts say.
If developments in the workplace have been numerous and have accelerated in recent years, things have progressed much less quickly in terms of union actions, observes Sid Ahmed Soussi, sociologist of work and trade unionism. “There is a temporality of work that is no longer the same with teleworking. But what is the most important point is really the structural transformations of the world of work,” illustrates the man who is also a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).
In 2021, the union presence rate in the province was 40%, according to a report published in 2022 by the Quebec Ministry of Labor. However, this number is a “relatively misleading” observation, believes Mr. Soussi. He specifies that the public sector accounts for 85.5% of the union presence, compared to 23% in private companies. Quebec is, according to him, a typical example of the situation where we are witnessing a decrease in union presence in the private and industrial sectors. “It’s like if you have two children and you say one of them is 18 years old and another is 2 years old, and their average age is 10 years old. It means absolutely nothing,” he illustrates. The professor explains this reality by a sharp contraction in the union presence in the private sector. “Today, it is the public sector which is the last great refuge for union action in Quebec,” he emphasizes.
Differences between generations
As baby boomers, Generation According to the associate professor at the School of Industrial Relations at the University of Montreal, these younger employees are more attached to their life balance than to their employer.
Teleworking option to reconcile professional and private lives, requests concerning sports halls or pool tables… “These are new generations who are more demanding in terms of the working conditions that they believe they have the right to demand,” observes Mme Dufour-Poirier.
“At the time of the industrial era, we were more in the archetype of the employee who defined himself by his work, with a very secure employment relationship. We could take for granted that we were going to stay in the same company all our lives. Now, it is clear that this is not the case,” adds the professor.
A large part of young Quebecers also work in non-unionized positions, observes Mr. Soussi. “Millennials and Zs today are people who do not work in the industrial sector. They are in service companies, in banks, in insurance. They do a lot of teleworking or hybrid work, or find themselves in conditions that current digital technologies allow. These sectors of activity, these categories of employees, they are not at all accessible to union action,” he believes.
Workers not all equal
If young people who were born and raised in Quebec feel more in a position to negotiate their working conditions, this is not the case for other workers of the same age. The latter include in particular migrants, refugees or temporary workers, sectors of activity where work is fragile also escape union action.
According to Mr. Soussi, the casualization of the workforce, generating a high turnover rate, constitutes “a major obstacle” to unionization in certain large companies.
Mme Dufour-Poirier agrees. “Unfortunately, women, racialized people, migrants, foreigners… All these people do not always have the same relationship at work […] And we must not see young people as a homogeneous group when we think about their expectations, their needs, their aspirations and the working conditions granted to them or offered by employers. »
Leadership that is not yet feminine enough
Despite the fact that more women than before occupy leadership positions within union movements, they are still in the minority, notes Mr. Soussi. “Today, women workers’ access to decision-making positions in union organizations remains problematic,” he says. And this, regardless of whether they are grassroots unions, federations or centrals. “We still have significant gaps even within the union organizations. But there are efforts being made. »
“It’s not just the fact of having a presence of women,” adds M.me Dufour-Poirier. She believes that people in leadership positions, regardless of gender, must have the open-mindedness necessary to take risks to bring about evolution. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, that it’s always going to go very well. But it is a process of change. We must therefore accept that there are times when things will be confusing. »
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