Everyone is for peace, but it is very difficult to avoid conflict when the protagonists all believe they can benefit from it.
There is “colossal work” being done at the negotiating tables, assures the president of the Treasury Board, Sonia LeBel. We just want to believe it, but why do we have this impression of witnessing a dialogue of the deaf between the Legault government and the representatives of the 600,000 state employees? Faced with a weakened opponent and pumped-up members, the unions currently have no reason to ease the pressure. In any case, they would be unable to hold back their troops.
The question is whether the warning shot that will be fired this week will degenerate into an indefinite general strike or whether an improvement in the government’s salary offers will allow an unblocking.
On Friday, Prime Minister Legault ruled out this possibility, for the moment at least. But it is difficult to envisage a settlement based on 10.3% over five years. Hearing this offer be described as “reasonable” is seen as a real insult by state employees. Ms. LeBel says she is waiting for a union counter-offer, but how should we react to an insult? By a counter-insult?
The problem is that the government seems to see in a generalized confrontation a way of restoring a balance of power by provoking a change of heart in public opinion, which is currently favorable to the unions. A Léger poll carried out at the beginning of November indicated that 47% of Quebecers supported the position of the Common Front, while 28% supported that of the government, with a quarter of respondents saying they were undecided or refusing to express an opinion.
It remains to be seen to what extent this support will continue, particularly for teachers, whose prolonged absence would cause many headaches for parents, who will also worry about its effects on their children’s schooling.
The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, knew very well that teachers would refuse his request to provide work to be carried out by students during the indefinite strike that the Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE) was preparing to launch: c was asking them to become strikebreakers in their own conflict. The minister will thus be able to accuse them of not having made a minimum of effort to prevent their students from falling too far behind.
The climate is already tense enough without Mr. Drainville adding fuel to the fire. The Montreal Association of Schools also considered it ill-advised to put pressure on teachers in this way.
The President of the Treasury Board would surely be grateful to her colleagues if they stopped making her task difficult. The plea on the need to take into account the State’s ability to pay would be more convincing if they refrained from initiatives as crazy as paying millions for a billionaire hockey club to come and play matches in Quebec without any importance, while it is done elsewhere without recourse to public funds.
Mr. Legault believes that those who make a link between this expenditure and negotiations in the public sector are playing “petty politics”. But he himself seems to have lost all political sense, period.
There are only three weeks left before the National Assembly adjourns its work for the holiday period. Unless there is a release which currently seems improbable, the government will have to decide whether it will adopt a special law or whether it will allow negotiations to continue in 2024.
It is clear that the paralysis of schools cannot be tolerated indefinitely. Especially since the FAE’s internal rules do not allow sporadic work stoppages: it’s an unlimited strike or nothing. On the other hand, it does not have a strike fund, which significantly limits the period during which teachers can go without salary.
Before forcing a return to work, whether by law or by starving teachers, we should, however, think about what happens next. The situation is no longer that which prevailed in 1983, when the Lévesque government had a “bludgeon law” adopted after three weeks of a strike called to protest against a temporary 20% salary cut.
At the time, the public network did not suffer from a shortage of teachers. Today, a quarter of young teachers leave the public network within the first five years, and we cannot replace them, even by lowering the required qualifications. At this rate, students may end up having to work from home without there even being a strike.