The Universal Exhibition of 1967 experienced an abysmal financial deficit. From then on, Jean Drapeau, then mayor of Montreal, launched his Lotto 6/49 with a view to reducing it. The winner must pick 6 correct numbers out of 49. Casually, the idea is socially brilliant. The Government of Quebec, in search of financing, recovers it immediately.
Quebecers were emerging from the regime of Maurice Duplessis, then Premier of Quebec, who had kept them poor for 18 years. Moreover, with its weakened authority, the Catholic Church no longer dared to press forward with such firmness that it was “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven “. Moreover, Jean Lesage’s Quiet Revolution had done its work. Henceforth, Quebecers could dream of being rich.
The political consequences are not long in coming. The Canadian Criminal Code is amended. It now allows the provinces to operate games of chance and money. From the foregoing was born the Société d’exploitation des loteries et courses du Québec (Loto-Québec) in 1969. It emerged from a world hitherto forbidden, both by faith and by law.
Loto-Québec has nearly 6,000 employees, including 4,500 in its casinos. The Société des casinos du Québec operates four casinos, namely those in Montreal, Charlevoix, Gatineau and Mont-Tremblant, as well as restaurant and hotel services. The strike also affects online games. Some 1,700 employees are on strike, excluding croupiers except those of the Casino du Mont-Tremblant.
The wage demands of the strikers are timely. For 2022, Loto-Québec reports net income of $1.6 billion, which represents a 40% increase over the previous period.
The company is thus reaping historic profits in an inflationary context. Taking into account these two combined factors, ie profitability and inflation, the strikers are demanding salary increases likely to compensate for their loss of purchasing power. Added to this is the need to attract quality human resources to Loto-Québec in a period of labor shortage exacerbated by an alarming turnover rate.
Executive salaries
In their quest for income, the strikers point the finger at the upper management of Loto-Québec, which would share, for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, $650,000 in bonuses. They also have their sights set on the CEO’s annual salary, at $596,421, up more than 40% from the previous year. On the contrary, for the workers, the wage policy of the State, in the name of the restraint of public finances, does not exceed a recovery of 2% per year.
In a world with porous borders, the casino strikers are in turn observed by the 420,000 members of the Syndicate Common Front who propose to cross swords with the Government of Quebec, after the summer holidays, with the idea of avoiding their impoverishment. This is the prospect of a strong employer-union confrontation in the fall of 2023, which would be whipped by the result of the casino strike, if the CSN which represents the strikers came out on top. Thus, this casino strike, a priori marginal, explains more than itself.
The main risk of inflation is to make indecent wages which until then were decent. At Loto-Québec, the average salary for basic jobs is around $25 per hour or $52,000 per year for a full-time employee.
However, in 2022, the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information (IRIS) estimates that a couple with two children, in the Montreal region, needs a minimum annual income of $65,000 per year to live decently or survive in simplicity. Nevertheless, households generally obtain this amount, or even more, if both spouses are in the labor market. From this perspective, Loto-Québec offers decent wages, but this does not solve the reduction in the purchasing power of workers caused by inflation.
The casino strike calls government wage policy into question. It illustrates once again the remunerative distance between leaders and those directed, particularly in the public sector. In this respect, it is a source of reflection at the level of distributive ethics. In addition, it is likely to influence the whole negotiation between the government and its half-million civil servants in the fall of 2023. It is therefore time for good judgment, which postulates a negotiation that would go to the essential by following a problem-solving process.