Quebec Premier Legault's Imperialist Reference Point
- K.C. Adams - 
Public sector workers demand wages and working conditions acceptable to themselves not according to Legault's reference point.
Premier François Legault spoke at a news conference on
May 2 regarding contract negotiations with Quebec's nurses, teachers,
elderly care workers and others in the public sector. He used his
platform as government leader not to negotiate in good faith with the
union leaders of the workers' collectives but to state his opinion as a
representative of the neo-liberal elite which is pursuing the
anti-social offensive. Legault said, "We've reached
the capacity of what we can pay. So when some union leaders say 'We
want more money,' well, we don't have any more money." Referring to
talks surrounding the contracts with public sector workers that have
languished for a full year he reiterated his anti-worker position
saying, "I think it was important to say clearly to the union, even if
you continue asking for [more money for] another six months, or a year,
there won't be any more money on the table."
No money in the public treasury is the constant refrain and
reference point of the Quebec government along with a promise not to
raise taxes. From a fanciful reality contrived in his brain, Legault
demands public sector workers give up their claims for wage increases
and working conditions acceptable to themselves and what they consider
necessary to sustain vibrant public services that the people, economy
and society require.
Legault's Reference Point Does Not Accord With Reality
In return for the sale of their capacity to work, public sector
workers are demanding individual and social reproduced-value that they
produce with their work. The wages and working conditions they consider
necessary to receive arise from the new value they produce as
productive workers in the social sectors of education, health care,
long-term care and elsewhere. They are not demanding wages and working
conditions paid from taxes but from a portion of the new value they
produce.
 The value they produce should be realized (paid for) in a proper
exchange with those enterprises in the economy that consume and profit
from it. The government has the social responsibility to ensure that
occurs. The government as employer and purchaser of workers' capacity
to work has authority over the value public sector workers'
produce. The duty of government in this situation is to ensure that the
value public sector workers produce is realized in the Quebec and
broader Canadian economy. The social value workers produce exists
materially and does not just evaporate into thin air but is consumed
throughout Quebec and beyond as socially produced value. Without the
production and consumption of this socially produced value, the economy
and indeed the society could not function or even exist. So what
happens to this socially produced value? Where has it gone and why is a
realized portion of it not available to meet the just claims of the
workers who have produced it?
Legault's reference point of having no money in the public treasury
provides a clue as to where the socially produced value has gone. The
money in the public treasury is mostly raised through individual
taxation of working people. The money has not come in payment in
exchange with private and public enterprises in the economy for the
socially produced value they consume. They refuse to do so. They refuse
to pay for (realize) the value public sector workers produce even
though they benefit from it and consume it on a regular basis via the
workers they employ and in other ways and could not operate or survive
without it.
The socially produced value is found in the educated and healthy
workers who sell their capacity to work to employers, and in
reproducing and maintaining working people and others from birth to
passing away. The value exists just as much as the value of electricity
exists to power and meet the needs of private and public enterprises
throughout the economy. Workers at Hydro-Quebec claim a portion of the
new value they produce when electricity is realized by companies that
consume it. The government cannot falsely say that its coffers are bare
and cannot pay Hydro-Quebec workers what they consider necessary. The
value Hydro-Quebec workers produce is readily
consumed and realized in the economy for all to see. Well, the working
class can likewise see that the social value education, healthcare and
other public sector workers produce is readily consumed as well,
otherwise the economy and society would collapse!
Legault's farcical reference point has been concocted over the years
as a pay-the-rich scheme for the big companies, oligopolies
and elites who have usurped power to exploit public sector
workers. They do this by expropriating the new
value public sector workers produce not directly by employing them and
expropriating the added-value they produce as profit but
through stealing socially produced value by refusing to pay for it in a
proper exchange.
 Public
sector workers and others do not accept Legault's reference point and
are in no mood to allow it to be used as a bludgeon to attack their
just demands and claims on the new value they produce. The government
must meet
their just demands and come up with a method to properly and fully
realize the social value public sector workers produce. A
portion of the money received in exchange for their socially produced
value should go towards their wages. Their wages should not come from
raising taxes of the people. They should come from a proper exchange
with the enterprises that consume what they produce and without which
they could not exist. Furthermore, governments must be made to stop
making contracts for public services with privatized agencies which
provide labour for large fees to themselves. If governments paid
proper wages and stopped being socially irresponsible as concerns
working conditions and stopped imposing laws which decree untenable
working hours, the current problems would not be cause for concern.
Organizing this to be done is a responsibility of the government. The
working class is speaking out demanding what belongs to them and
society by right.
Workers reject Legault's neo-liberal anti-people, anti-social and anti-national reference point! Whether money
in the public treasury from taxes is big or small is irrelevant to the
fact that public sector workers have a legitimate claim on the new
value they produce. The Quebec government must meet the public sector
workers' demands for wages and working conditions acceptable to
themselves! They produce the value; they deserve their claim on the
value they produce!
This article was published in
May 12, 2021 - No. 43
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2021/Articles/WO08432.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
