I have the greatest respect for the teachers who chose to walk out without strike funds. Their sacrifices show how much they want change.
But a question arises: will the strikers ultimately lose out by combining wage losses and pay increases?
And from the other angle, is the government making teachers wait in order to save money to finance the increases?
Two answers, in my opinion. For young people, wage losses will be amply made up for by long-term gains. For some older employees, however, the equation will be a losing one.
The amount at stake? Since the start of the strikes, Quebec has saved $1.3 billion in unpaid compensation, according to the careful calculations of an economist from the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ), to which I had access. The calculations were made using financial data from the Quebec government.
The amount is very impressive. To estimate it, the CSQ essentially calculated the daily payroll of the different groups and multiplied everything by their respective number of days of strikes since the start of “hostilities”.
The gap between the groups varies according to the number of strikers and strike days, essentially (see table). For example, FAE teachers have been on strike for longer, but they have 66,500 members, compared to 225,000 for the CSQ and 80,000 for the FIQ.
Presented differently, in education, a day of strike saves the government 14.6 million with the FAE and 62 million with the Common Front (schools and CEGEPs, teachers and support staff).
In health, one day of strike represents savings of 35.8 million with the Common Front and 29.3 million with FIQ union members.
Obviously, these savings assume that the government will not recover days lost by employees after signing the agreements. The net saving could be less, therefore, if the government extends the school calendar or asks nurses to work overtime to make up for delayed operations.
Is this a loss for the strikers? Basically no, in my opinion. I’m not the biggest unionist, but I am convinced that in a labor dispute, union members’ pressure tactics end up forcing the employer to improve its offers.
Since the beginning, moreover, Quebec has revised its salary offer, increasing it from 9.3% over 5 years to 10.3%, then to 12.7%. François Legault has hinted at another increase if he obtains a certain flexibility from teachers and nurses, in particular.
Above all, we must understand that the 1.3 billion economy is one-off, while the salary increases will be recurring and therefore added to government spending – and employee salaries – in each of the coming years.
For example, a 1% increase in remuneration from year 1 of the agreement costs the government approximately 414 million per year, estimates the CSQ.
Thus, if the union members succeed in extracting 3 percentage points more from the government and this improvement applies from the first year, the gain will be 1.2 billion at the end of this first year (414 million X 3).
This amount is almost as large as the wages lost by union members to date. And in each of the following years, this gain of 1.2 billion is added, to total 12 billion over 10 years, for example, or 10 times the salary losses.
The corollary, as you will have understood, is that the gains will be lower for strikers who plan to leave their posts before long. For example, a government employee who retires next year will likely lose out.
Why, concretely? Because in the improved offer of 10.3% which preceded the strikes, a share of 4.3 points applied from the first year. However, this 4.3% has not changed in the most recent offer, so that for this future retiree, the days of strike will not have made him obtain more before bowing out.
Another angle of analysis: the comparison of salary losses with the lump sum of $1000 promised by the government. These $1,000 represent around 470 million for all employees, according to the CSQ. The losses of 1.3 billion in wages are therefore three times greater than the lump sum amount.
It’s not just the salaries, of course. Teachers, for example, hope to make gains in class composition that could make their lives easier in the coming years. And this gain is not necessarily quantifiable.
Regardless, I fear that the strikers will be disappointed with the results, given their sacrifices and their very high expectations. Their struggle will inevitably have brought gains, but the Quebec school, to take this sector, will not be completely transformed, once the new agreement is signed.
The millions of the FAE
I was bombarded with reactions for my column “Les millions de la FAE”, published Friday. I would like to come back to two elements.
First, the seven members of the FAE executive, notably Mélanie Hubert, are not paid during the strike, like their union members. On the other hand, the forty permanent employees of the FAE (union advisors, administrative staff, etc.) are obviously paid.
At the CSQ, the situation is a little different. Members of the executive, like President Éric Gingras, lose the salary of the position they occupied (teacher in the case of Mr. Gingras) during the strike days, but continue to receive the additional portion allocated to them for managerial functions. The CSQ tells me that this portion is less than a teacher’s salary.
I did not address this question in the column, but you eagerly asked me for this information.
Furthermore, I wrote in this column that the members of the FSE had not voted for an unlimited general strike, unlike those of the FAE. This is incorrect: FSE teachers, members of the Common Front, voted in favor of strikes in sequence to begin with, followed by an unlimited general strike eventually. Mea culpa.