Nearly a thousand Laval teachers voted 93% in favor of an indefinite general strike during a general assembly on Tuesday evening, amid fears of a possible special law. This is the last union affiliated with the Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE) to have a strike mandate.
Almost all the chairs were occupied in an imposing room of the Palace Congress Center and a few teachers took the opportunity to correct papers while listening to the interventions with an absent ear.
The decision to go on strike for the nine affiliated unions is now in the hands of the FAE. “It won’t be tomorrow morning,” assures André Arsenault, president of the Laval region education union. Nor this week. The FAE federative negotiating council is due to meet Thursday morning to discuss the next steps and the decision on the timing of the strike will not be taken at that time. “It is now up to the government to show whether we should use it or not,” he says.
The Assembly was punctuated by numerous interventions, sometimes fiery, in favor of the strike, but also by questions from teachers unsure that this means of pressure will indeed lead to better working conditions.
“I have been in favor of the strike since I heard the minister [Bernard Drainville] say that an adult person was needed in front of a class. I did my baccalaureate, I’m sorry but for me it matters,” said a teacher from the Rainbow school into the microphone. Another teacher noted the fact that the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) police officers rejected a salary increase of 21% over five years.
The discussion on the strike proposals was short, lasting around fifteen minutes, with the vast majority of those present seeming to have already made up their minds before showing up on site.
Fears of the imposition of a possible special law were present. “Teachers have already experienced special laws in the past, so it scares them enormously,” emphasizes André Arsenault. What reassures them is what happened in Western Canada. The Supreme Court came to say that there can be a special law to force a return to work, but that working conditions cannot be dictated.”
What “is most worrying,” however, would be the use of the notwithstanding clause by Quebec, as was the case in Ontario, to impose a collective agreement on teachers. “It’s very, very worrying, and we know the current government has already passed laws under gag order,” he said.
The vote was done by secret ballot and 24 tellers voted at the start of the meeting compiled the ballot papers.