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June 4, 2021 - No. 53
Industrial and Public Sector Workers
Hold Vigil at
Quebec National Assembly
Workers Speak Out Against the Dismantling
of the Occupational
Health and Safety Regime
• What
Participants Said in the Course of the Vigil
Industrial and Public Sector
Workers Hold Vigil at Quebec National Assembly
From the morning of May 31 to 5:00 pm on June
2, a period of 59 hours,
hundreds of workers participated in a vigil in
front of the National
Assembly in Quebec City to prevent the adoption
of the Quebec
government's Bill 59, An Act to modernize the occupational
health and
safety regime. Statements issued during the vigil all rejected the bill as unacceptable.
Bill 59, if passed,
would dramatically reduce access to treatment
and compensation for
workers injured or made ill on the job in order
to save employers more
than $4 billion over ten years. The bill gives
unilateral power to
employers to determine workplace prevention and
health programs, the
hours
that will be devoted to prevention, how the
joint health and safety
committees will operate, and many other aspects
of the system.
The unions and defence organizations of injured
workers that
participated in the vigil included the United
Steelworkers - Quebec,
the Union des travailleuses et travailleurs
accidentés ou
malades (UTTAM), the Canadian Union of Public
Employees - Quebec,
Unifor, the Union of Quebec Government
Professionals, the Alliance du
personnel
professionnel et technique de la santé et des
services sociaux
(APTS), the Quebec Union of Service Employees
(SQEES) and many others.
Central labour bodies including the Quebec
Federation of Labour (FTQ), the
Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN) and
the Congress of Democratic
Trade Unions (CSD) were also present on a regular
basis at the
vigil.
ArcelorMittal workers join vigil against Bill
59, June 1, 2021
Striking Olymel Vallée-Jonction
workers participate in vigil, June 2, 2021
On
June 1, about 200 fly-in fly-out workers on strike at ArcelorMittal on
Quebec's North Shore came to participate in the vigil. On June 2, 200
Olymel workers on strike in Vallée-Jonction in Beauce region
came to participate. These workers clearly indicated that one of the
important aspects of their strikes is health and safety conditions at
the work sites, notably ArcelorMittal's refusal to make the necessary
investments to make the sites and equipment safe and Olymel's demands
for health and safety concessions. They stated that they are fighting
against the dictate of these monopolies and explained that the
situation would only get worse if Bill 59, which strengthens the power
of the employers in the name of "modernization," is adopted.
Participants
in the vigil spent a lot of time talking to
people on the street to
explain what the legislation is and why it must
be defeated. They also
spoke to members of the National Assembly,
explaining their position
and asking them not to pass this bill. This
followed weeks of activity
by union activists who phoned or held virtual
meetings
with MLAs in their ridings and regions to
present their position and
ask them to take a stand against the bill and in
defence of
workers' health and safety.
Months
of actions and mobilization against this dismantling of the health and
safety regime have made it now virtually impossible for the National
Assembly to pass the bill before the legislature adjourns for the
summer on June 11. Bill 59 amends two major pieces of legislation,
the Act
respecting industrial accidents and
occupational diseases and the Act
respecting occupational health and safety.
The clause-by-clause review
of the bill by the Committee on Labour and the
Economy has not even
started to address the sections relating to the
second Act.
Workers learned on June 1 that the Committee
would not be sitting on
June 1 and 2 as scheduled. The surreal climate
in which the government
is manoeuvring was well expressed at the May 31
meeting of the
committee when Labour Minister Jean Boulet said
he appreciated that
everyone, both supporters and opponents of the
bill, recognized
the "legitimacy" of Bill 59. He added that if he
could be convinced
that the bill needed to be improved, he would do
so! This at a time
when hundreds of workers were demonstrating
nearby to declare that his
bill will destroy lives and is unacceptable from
top to bottom.
 These
pathetic statements who are showing that government ministers are the
servants of narrow private interests speak volumes about the disconnect
between what is called the public authority, which is exercising
prerogative powers on behalf of the rich, and the public, the workers
who do the work and keep the economy going. Workers have the right to
safe and healthy working conditions and to have all the services they
need for care, rehabilitation, compensation and re-training if they get
injured or sick on the job, paid for by those who buy their capacity to
work.
The options available to the government as the
current session of
the National Assembly draws to a close are to
continue clause-by-clause
consideration by the Committee at the end of the
summer or in September
when the National Assembly reconvenes to force
the passage of the bill
under closure, to withdraw it altogether or to
let it die on the
order paper.
The Coalition Avenir Québec government would do
well to think
twice before using closure or going back to
clause-by-clause
consideration. The collective actions of workers
will not stop, because
lives are at stake. The mobilization of the last
few months and the
collective action of the vigil has made workers
more confident and more
determined to be effective by speaking out on
what changes are needed
that favour themselves and society. Bill 59 must
be withdrawn. No reform of the occupational health
and safety system can be
made without workers having a decisive say and
without the reform being
based on their demands, their rights and their
needs.
Workers' Forum fully supports all the
actions that Quebec
workers are taking to make their voices heard
and create public opinion
for the defeat of Bill 59.
 
Dominic Lemieux, Quebec Director of the
Syndicat des Métallos/United Steelworkers
On the first day of the vigil, May 31, Dominic Lemieux said, "Bill 59 as it
stands must be abandoned. It needs to be reworked and come back with a
new draft, because there are too many things wrong with this bill." Lemieux made several statements over
the three days. Speaking to a reporter from Le
Soleil on June 1, he said:
"The most important aspect of the labour
movement is really the
safety and health of the members we represent. I
know what that is. In
our grandparents' days many miners died, over
200 miners every year.
Now it's one worker a year. We must not stop our
efforts to prevent
injuries and deaths. We want the same tools for
prevention in all
sectors in Quebec, it is very clear. This is a
major issue. We are
talking about our lives. "
In a June 1 United Steelworkers' press release
he states:
"Bill 59 will lead to major setbacks in health
and safety prevention
in our workplaces and cuts in compensation for
injured workers. If this
legislation is adopted, protections currently
provided in the law will
no longer be available and unions will have to
negotiate new provisions
in collective agreements to compensate for the
weakening of our
laws. This is disastrous for non-unionized
workers, who have no such
recourse, and is a threat to labour relations as
it will increase the
risk of labour disputes over issues that were
previously settled in
law."
In appreciation of the presence of striking
ArcelorMittal workers at
the vigil, he writes in the same press release:
"Steelworkers are
showing that distance is not a barrier to
solidarity. Community and
labour solidarity is built through the people
who live and work in our
communities."
Felix Lapan, Spokesperson for the Union des
Travailleuses et
Travailleurs Accidentés ou Malades (UTTAM)
On the first morning of the vigil, May 31, he
said:
"We are here in front of the National Assembly
with
activists from the labour movement for 59 hours.
For us, as for the
Steelworkers, this is not acceptable. This bill
is not acceptable
because of the setbacks in compensation,
setbacks in the recognition of
occupational diseases, setbacks to the right to
medical assistance,
setbacks to the right to
rehabilitation, a whole bunch of setbacks to our
rights. We know the
situation. We defend the victims of work-related
accidents and
illnesses. This bill is unacceptable and we will
fight it to the end."
Chantal Ide, Vice-President of the CNTU
Central Council of Greater Montreal
On the first morning of the vigil, she said:
"We are here to denounce this bill, to show
that we are all
united behind our demand to have a health and
safety law that really
protects us. The health and safety of workers is
not negotiable. There
are no concessions to be made on our side. We
will keep this vigil for
59 hours. We will fight until the end to obtain
a law that will really
protect the workers in Quebec."
Karine Sénéchal, President of USW Local 5778
Karine Sénéchal represents ArcelorMittal
workers at
the Mont-Wright mine in Fermont who have been on
strike since May 10.
The mining complex includes a concentrator where
workers are very
concerned about the level of noise and dust,
particularly silica dust,
and the risk of contracting silicosis.
"We have to wear personal respiratory
protection equipment to
work at the concentrator because the employer
has not completed the
work needed to reduce risks. Imagine if the law
becomes less demanding
of companies -- it will have an even greater,
regressive domino
effect," she told the vigil.
Martin Maurice, President of the
Olymel Vallée-Jonction-CSN Workers' Union
The union represents Olymel workers in
Vallée-Jonction who have been on strike since
April 28.
After demonstrating in the streets of Quebec
City on June 2, the workers joined the vigil
where the union president said:
"In negotiations, in addition to setbacks
affecting our working
conditions, Olymel has also tabled demands for
setbacks in occupational
health and safety. At our plant, we are
fast-paced, hard-working and we
experience about 400 work-related accidents each
year, often
musculoskeletal injuries, so we are more than
concerned about the holes
in
Bill 59. Over time, we have been able to
negotiate advances in our
collective agreement to protect workers in the
event of an accident and
now our employer and the government are
attacking these and wanting to
remove the only tools that allow us to deal with
those who are injured
on the job."
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individually click on the black headline.)
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