What Did Quebec Public-Sector Unions Achieve?

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1247 .... April 15, 2016
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What Did Quebec Public-Sector Unions Achieve?

Ashley Smith

After a wave of protests and job actions that culminated in Quebec's largest general strike in decades last December, public-sector unions have agreed to a series of contracts with disappointing concessions that raise questions about where the struggle in Quebec will go next.

On December 9, more than 400,000 workers shut down government services to defend their wages, benefits and working conditions. Liberal Party Premier Philippe Couillard provoked the strike by demanding massive concessions. Unions formed a bargaining alliance, the Common Front, to negotiate with the government. The nurses in the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ) and teachers in the Fédération autonome de l'enseignement (FAE) held separate talks.

In the wake of... the general strike, the Common Front reached a tentative agreement on December 17. The FIQ settled a similar deal. The union officials claimed it was a triumph for the workers, but Robert Green, a teacher in Montreal, argues that, at best, it maintained the status quo and therefore deemed it "a hollow victory," in an article for the Ricochet website.

One of the largest unions in the Common Front, the Fédération de la santé et des services sociaux (FSSS), which represents healthcare workers, rejected the agreement. So did the FAE. They hoped to continue negotiations for a better settlement, but in the end agreed to a deal that was little better than that reached by the Common Front.

Benoit Renaud, a teacher and activist in the left-wing party Québec Solidaire, observed: "If you view the strike as a boxing match between the government and the unions, you could say that it was a split decision, with two judges declaring the government the winner and one the workers the winner. The government was going for a knockout, and it certainly didn't get one. The unions made it a fight, blocked the government's worst shots and managed to land some of their own. But in the end, they didn't win the fight."

Now that union members have ratified all of these agreements, this phase of class struggle against neoliberal austerity in Quebec has come to a close, and activists are drawing lessons for the next one.

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