It was a tense Bernard Drainville who presented his catch-up plan for schools on Tuesday, while students returned to class after one of the longest labor conflicts in Quebec history.
Walkout days throughout the public sector, an unlimited five-week general strike for teachers of the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE): the last few months have certainly not been ordinary. While the agreements in principle have not yet been ratified, it is undoubtedly too early to talk about results. However, we can already say that the recent mobilizations are not without significance.
First, the obvious: it was not a given that the population would follow the strikers, and even less so in an indefinite general strike forcing school-aged children to stay at home for such a long period. Except that the Legault government, after a spectacular series of bad decisions, had already burned the population.
The high cost of living, the housing crisis, the mess on the third link, Northvolt without BAPE, millions of dollars for the Los Angeles Kings, health reform adopted under gag order despite promises of vague results. All this while everyone sees the state of public services — and everyone has wondered, while waiting on the 811 line, how we got to this point.
Quebecers are good people, but they don’t like being taken for fools. So when teachers decided to go on an indefinite general strike, they jumped on the bandwagon, despite the inconveniences.
This certainly had an effect on the mobilization of the public sector. However, we must also see the broader context, that of a momentum for unionism on a North American scale, Thomas Collombat, professor of political science at the University of Quebec in Outaouais, explained to me: “This mobilization was not made in a vacuum, we must not exaggerate Quebec exceptionalism in this sense. »
In recent years, trade union organizations have experienced renewed vigor, a burst of combativeness, he notes, including – and even above all – in the private sector.
In the United States, we think of the recent mobilizations of auto workers. In the fall, the United Auto Worker (UAW) union won historic wage gains for its workers, especially those at the bottom of the pay scale. Unionization in this sector is progressing for the first time in decades. In the process, thousands of workers became politicized by taking up union action, and the wave does not seem to be running out of steam.
We also think of the recent struggles for the unionization of Amazon workers. Despite fierce opposition from the company, the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), founded in 2021 at the height of the health crisis, mobilized thousands of workers subjected to some of the most precarious and difficult working conditions on the market. This movement also includes a particularly combative core, which draws clear links between the struggles of workers and other areas of social justice — climate issues and issues of racism, for example. Combat unionism like we rarely see.
There is indeed a Quebec distinction, Thomas Collombat tells me again: it lies in the public sector’s mode of negotiation. The dynamic of the inter-union Common Front is quite unique, and it generates other forms of solidarity. “We saw, for example, the solidarity of private unions, which lent a hand to the FAE strikers. This sent a clear message: the negotiations did not only affect the public sector, because the State is the employer of choice. »
This is a crucial element: the prescriptive effect of public sector working conditions on the entire market. The state-employer is a barometer; he sets the standard. To put it briefly, when government employees get good working conditions, it tends to level the entire market upwards. “In a post-pandemic and inflationary economic context, combined with recruitment difficulties, workers have a relative balance of power,” notes Thomas Collombat. So much so that in Quebec, when it comes to public sector negotiations, “people no longer buy the “ability to pay” discourse”.
François Legault tried, but the population was not fooled. Everyone saw that billions were there to help businesses get through the pandemic or to subsidize the battery sector despite limited benefits. But should we tighten the screws on teachers and nurses? Let’s go…
The gendered dimension, here, comes to the forefront. The historian Camille Robert recalled this in December, in a text published on Pivot : public sector mobilizations are above all mobilizations of women, and they always have been. Mme Robert evokes the strike of teachers in the winter of 1983, who were then opposed to the overload of work and the lack of resources to integrate children in difficulty into classes. They will be hit by a special law, with the Lévesque government playing the “privilege” card of public sector workers.
The story has hiccups. But after the pandemic, after praising the efforts of the guardian angels for months while the network threatened to collapse under the pressure induced by the health crisis, this cassette no longer works. And these are women who, in 2023, stood up to remind us of this. By doing this, they have done a service to all workers, and to the population they serve.
We can at least say this: it is to them that the honors go.