Municipal Workers in Quebec Stand
Up for
Their Rights and Dignity
Public Sector Employers
Create Impasse for Workers
Protest by Montreal Transit maintenance workers, September 13,
2018.
Municipal employees are waging a brave fight
against
the untenable situation in which the Quebec government and some
municipal employers seek to place them. Workers face a concerted
attack
on their right to negotiate their terms of employment to obtain
conditions that are acceptable to them, without threat, without
criminalization and
without arbitrary laws that dictate and aggravate their working
and
living conditions and deny them their rights.
A prominent example is the maintenance workers of
the
Montreal Transit Corporation (STM) who play a very important role
in
public safety by maintaining buses and subway cars. (See interview
below with the President of the union). In their current
negotiations
for a new collective agreement, they face an impasse created by
the
Quebec
government, the Montreal Transit Corporation, and the
Administrative
Labour Tribunal.
The workers are subject to two laws, one that
virtually
eliminates their right to negotiate the terms of their pension
plan,
and the other that allows a governmental decree of their terms of
employment if it considers that negotiations are not proceeding
to its
liking. This threat of dictate has been combined during
negotiations
with the arbitrary
dismissal and other disciplinary measures against workers. As
well, the
Labour Tribunal is prosecuting workers under false accusations of
sabotage of maintenance and the use of illegal methods to
pressure
management.
In this context, the Montreal Transit Corporation
has
announced a "global and final offer" after two years of
negotiations,
blaming the workers for the fact that no collective agreement has
yet
been signed. The workers are asking: what is the meaning of this
so-called global and threatening final offer? Is the
transportation
company preparing to
ask the government to step in and dictate a collective agreement,
if
the workers do not accept this "global and final offer"?
Workers are entitled to ask, discuss and question
publicly, openly and collectively the situation they are facing.
How
can this two year ordeal end either with an unacceptable "global
and
final offer" or a government decree and yet be considered fair
collective bargaining? What is the legal space left for them to
present
demands and concerns
they consider important to themselves and the service, and find
some
acceptable arrangement?
Workers
do
not
find it acceptable that governments, which declare themselves
democratic, violate with impunity the rights of municipal workers
to
negotiate their working conditions, wages and pensions. Equally
unacceptable is the elimination of negotiations, or what used to
be
called fair collective bargaining, under the veneer of high
ideals. The
workers' right to a say over what they receive in exchange for
their
capacity to work, and over their working conditions, belongs to
them as
a matter of right. In the case of STM workers, their working
conditions
are directly related to providing a level of public services the
people
and society need and expect.
STM
workers
are
not the only ones in this untenable situation. Municipal
employees across Quebec have lost significant amounts of money,
sometimes more than $10,000 for a single worker, because of the
pension
law that forced workers to cover deficits in pension funds, even
when workers had always put in the amounts required under their
collective agreement but employers did not. Several municipal
governments failed to contribute the required amounts and
diverted
money to other areas with government approval. This can only be
called
theft of what belongs to workers by right, legally negotiated in
exchange for their capacity to work. Not only is this ongoing
theft
very large, the legal space for negotiating an end to these
anti-worker
practices has been virtually eliminated.
The attacks against the municipal workers also
pave the
way to further privatization of municipal services under
imperialist
free trade agreements such as the Comprehensive Economic and
Trade
Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union of the
monopolies, and the replacement of NAFTA, the United
States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). These supranational
monopoly-controlled trade
agreements lessen local control over the economy, drive down
workers'
claims on the value they produce, allow private enterprise to
expropriate the added-value municipal workers create, and open
the door
for higher user fees and government subsidies to the monopolies
that
own and control public services and infrastructure both now and
in the
future.
Workers' Forum stands firmly with the
municipal
workers in Quebec and Canada who are persisting in their just
struggle
in defence of their rights and the public services they provide.
The
refusal of the ruling elite to recognize the rights of the
working
class to a say and control over its terms of employment is not
"free
collective
bargaining" but a denial of workers' rights. For the working
class,
freedom lies in the recognition of the necessity for change in a
manner
which deprives the ruling elite of their power to deprive workers
of
the power to affirm rights.
This article was published in
Number 6 - February 21, 2019
Article Link:
Municipal Workers in Quebec Stand
Up for
Their Rights and Dignity: Public Sector Employers
Create Impasse for Workers
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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