Attacks on Quebec Public Sector Unions

Upping the Use of Executive Powers Against Workers

– Pierre Chénier –

Quebec Premier François Legault and Treasury Board Chair Sonia LeBel, who is responsible for negotiations with public sector workers, have launched a much-publicized attack on workers and their unions. Unions are currently attempting to renew their collective agreements, which expire on March 31, by negotiating wages and working conditions that workers deem acceptable.

Premier Legault denounced the unions for being close-minded because they refuse to participate in what he calls public discussion forums held by the government outside and against the legitimate negotiating process. His media campaign is to sow doubt in the unions' insistence that talks be held during actual negotiations where the unions can present the workers' demands. The unions point out that the government's proposed public discussion forums are unacceptable because they bypass the central and local negotiating tables and legal processes. Furthermore, the government which has the state power on its side, is the one setting the agenda of these forums based on what it calls "foundational changes" it has identified as priorities. What it means by "foundational changes" is revealed by the overall topic in these discussions which is what the government calls the need for more flexibility within the collective agreements.

Recent events in the Mauricie-Centre-du-Québec region are a clear example of what the government's demand for "flexibility" is all about. In the Mauricie-Centre-du-Québec nurses are protesting against the imposition of working conditions which force them to work in sectors they are not familiar with, which entails associated risks for themselves and patients. This is the restructuring the government wants to impose across the board.

The Quebec Premier is trying to drive a wedge between workers and their unions: "But in the meantime, it is you who are waiting in the emergency room and the nurses who are working under difficult conditions," he wrote in his February 25 Facebook post. "Meanwhile, teachers are working under less than ideal conditions. If the union leaders agreed to change their attitude, to get out of their close-minded logic and come and discuss with us to change things, it would happen faster. It would be better for Quebeckers and it would be better for nurses and teachers. I sincerely hope that the union leaders quickly accept to become part of the solution. We're waiting for them."

Meanwhile, the Premier and the Treasury Board Chair are moving towards declaring these so-called forums an actual central bargaining table.

In a February 27 radio interview, the Treasury Board Chair referred to the discussion forums as "bargaining tables" with the unions, a "place beside" the other tables, "an added central table."

Earlier in the month an article was published on the Treasury Board website entitled "Fast-Track Bargaining Forums – Negotiations: Government Walks the Talk."

The article states: "A government offer was presented today at the accelerated bargaining forums' Team Classroom, Team Care and Team Mental Health, held in preparation for the renewal of the 2020-2023 public and parapublic sector collective agreements. This offer, unprecedented at the beginning of negotiations, was put forward by Sonia LeBel, Minister Responsible for Government Administration and Treasury Board Chair."

A central bargaining table is a table that brings together the negotiating committees of both parties, employers and unions, which sort out national issues such as wages, pensions and others. It should be noted that these fast-track negotiation forums were so fast-tracked that if they were held at all, it was without the presence of any union representatives.

It is very arrogant from those who have wrecked the health and social services system to point fingers at others and claim to be the ones with solutions. Among other things, they managed the pandemic through ministerial orders for two and a half years, thereby cancelling workers' negotiated terms and conditions of work. This led to mass resignations in the health system. The resultant even more untenable conditions are the fault of the government, nobody else. Workers rightly reject all efforts to deny them their voice and the demands and solutions they are intent on bringing to the bargaining tables where, through negotiations, mutually acceptable agreements are supposed to be reached.


Preparing the Ground for New Ministerial Coups

By engaging in this public attack against public sector unions, the Legault government is clearly trying to undermine negotiations. The Interprofessional Health Care Federation of Quebec (FIQ) has revealed that it proposed 28 meeting dates to employer organizations in February and March, and that the latter retained only four. In its propaganda, the government denigrates the negotiations by saying that they are interminable, that there are too many unions at play representing the same sector, each with its own demands, and that the situation is urgent. Discrediting bargaining and putting the blame for stalling on the unions at a time correcting the untenable situation in the hospitals, education and health care sectors is urgent, goes hand in hand with the propaganda that there are too many unions in the same sector and that a centralized form under ministerial direction is required to protect the public, protect the workers and hasten the process. It is all done self-righteously, in the name of equality and the public good.

"There's no way that I'm going to have two classes of teachers or two classes of nurses in Quebec. We have more than one union representing nurses and more than one union representing teachers," Minister LeBel told La Presse earlier in February.

Under the pretext of urgency and the collective good, unions are presented as having narrow, diverging interests. The aim is to prepare for the imposition of wages and working conditions which the workers oppose. It is also geared towards the creation of a decision-making body under ministerial authority. What was initially referred to as a "public discussion forum," quickly became a "negotiation table," without bothering to inform the unions how they would be incorporated in some form, let alone consulting them or permitting the workers to take the decisions which affect their lives.

The situation is being used as a testing ground for further state restructuring whereby executive powers are further strengthened to serve narrow private interests. This has nothing to do with a human-centred solution to any problem in health, education or other social public services. To declare public discussion forums which cancel out all spaces for workers' voices to be heard is fraud and the government should be held to account.

In that respect, it is in the interests of unions to maintain their rejection of such forums and insist their claims and solutions be put on the table for negotiation. The use of the state ministerial powers to achieve an outcome which narrow private interests want will only make the situation in the public sector much worse. The workers' wages and working conditions are the students' learning conditions and the public's health care conditions. They are one. The workers and their unions, not the government, stand on the moral high ground in this battle against the attempt of government to act with impunity in the name of the public good.

(Quotations translated from original French by Workers' Forum.)


This article was published in
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Number 9 - March 3, 2023

Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2023/Articles/WO10091.HTM


    

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