Schools whose teachers are affiliated with the Autonomous Education Federation have been closed for 19 days. Without an agreement at this time, we are already certain that this strike will last at least two more days.
21 days spread over five weeks. The count will reach 24 if nothing picks up before Christmas. This walkout by FAE teachers will go down in history. According to available records, this is the longest period of school closures due to a labor conflict in the annals of Quebec.
In the past, no government has tolerated sending children home for an extended period because of failed negotiations. The National Union had no patience at the end of the 1960s. The PQ had trapped teachers in a special strategic law at the end of the 1970s.
Three weeks
The 1983 strike was the longest to date. The PQ government of René Lévesque, which had cut pay by 20% a few months before, had tolerated three weeks of strike. But three weeks (15 days of missed class) was deemed the tolerable limit beyond which schools absolutely had to reopen.
Since that time, we have had either regulations or special laws, but never prolonged strikes.
Elsewhere
Ontario experienced a strike considered dramatic by its teachers in 1997. The government made unprecedented cuts in education. Schools were closed for 10 days.
Only British Columbia experienced a twenty-day strike in 2014, spread over two school years, with certain essential services maintained.
In the United States, Chicago experienced a teachers’ strike considered enormous in 1987. Schools were closed for 19 days.
In the United States you will find a few strikes here and there that lasted within 20 days, but on the scale of a single school district. The number of students and teachers involved has nothing to do with it. In Homer, a village of 100 inhabitants in Illinois, an 8-month strike closed the school for 8 months, an absolute record.
New York experienced a 36-day teachers’ strike in 1968, but the issue was social and racial. Something other than a collective agreement.
In Europe
In France, the country that we sometimes make fun of for its numerous strikes, we have to go back to 1947, when the teachers’ strike took place. A so-called historic social movement. Eleven days.
Nowadays in France, we never close schools. In the event of strike days, there is a “minimum reception service” for children.
In the United Kingdom, there is little other than one-day strikes and even then, many schools do not close completely.
Poland considers having experienced a historic teachers’ strike in 2019. Fifteen days.
So many Quebec schools completely closed for more than 20 days: it’s enormous and inexplicable.