To the great surprise of just about everyone, the unions mobilized against the government. It hadn’t happened for ages but this fall the unions suddenly looked more like a combative social movement than like a lobby group or an insurance company. A look back...

A gentle beginning

It’s worth remembering that the union battle with Charest began very softly. On October 21, the Réseau de vigilance (Vigilance Network), a new coalition that we’ve barely heard from since, got the ball rolling with a rally to “Sound the Alarm” as the new session of parliament opened. What was new was that all the unions, except for the FTQ, mobilized large numbers. 1,500 people, the majority union members, participated in the first of a long series of demos in front of the parliament. In the following weeks, every major union took its turn demonstrating on parliament hill to register its opposition to the re-engineering project. The prize for ridiculousness went without any doubt to CUPE on October 27th, when it organized a pan-Canadian demo against Charest by parading about 2000 activists who were in Quebec City for their convention. Held at lunch time during a series of union meetings, the demonstrations were less than impressive, as they were essentially composed of union delegates. They rapidly became so routine that the SQ stopped taking down the metal barricades surrounding the parliament building.

The government was visibly searching for a way to divide the movement and prevent a common front from emerging by means of its legislation on the amalgamation/destruction of health care unions. But it ended up creating exactly what it didn’t want. Far from impeding mobilization, putting unions in competition with each other seemed to lead instead to a one-upmanship that took the form of increasingly radical actions. The CSN seemed to be the only organization to take the government’s threats seriously. It was also the only one to equip itself with a real plan of action, which effectively set the tone for the rest of the movement. It’s nonetheless interesting to think about the fact that at the national level, union activity seemed to be as much “all against the CSN” as “all against Charest”. Essentially, this fear of the CSN has to do with the fact that it is by far the biggest labor federation of Quebec’s public sector. Most of the other organizations are either CSN splinters (SFPQ, SPGQ, SEMB-SAQ) or competitors that have essentially built themselves up in opposition to it. Nevertheless, all the periods of strong mobilization were connected to the dates proposed by the CSN weeks and even months in advance.

Thus, the first big union demonstration to be held on parliament hill was organized with less than a week’s notice on a directive from the FTQ, as it was being outwitted by the CSN and pushed by its base in the health sector who all wanted to see some action. As a resul, 7,000 people from all the unions except the CSN demonstrated in Quebec City on November 26th. On November 29th, it was 30,000 CSN union members (12% of the membership of the confederation) who demonstrated in Quebec City, alongside other social groups, but the only union. It was during this show of strength that Claudette Carbonneau publicly announced a national day of work-place disruption on December 11th. The following week got off to a brilliant start — the office of the president of the National Assembly was trashed and the Health Minister’s press conference at Sainte-Justine Hospital was cancelled on December 1st. The reason? Unionized workers’ anger. All week, the FTQ mobilized its members in the health care network in a series of public assemblies and direct actions. From that point on, there were no shortage of demonstrations to attend each day.

A few days before December 11th, each union in turn announced that it would participate. If they were all going to strike on the same day, they wouldn’t necessarily do it together. Once again, the CSN was on one side and everyone else on the other. That day, the FTQ pulled of a tour de force, blocking the four major ports in Quebec as well as road access to major “resource regions” — and stealing the show by mobilizing 20 times more people than the CSN on a CSN day of action! All this mobilization nonetheless failed to make the government back down. On December 15th, the government muzzles the opposition, as 3-4000 unionized workers demonstrated noisily outside of parliament. That was, in the end, the only really national demonstration by a unionized common front. It was followed by some final skirmishes, and then by a long holiday period.

A leopard can’t change its spots

Right in the middle of the holidays, Henri Massé gave a first-rate burial to the notion of a general strike against Charest’s policies. The same person who, on December 15th, had talked in front of parliament about “workers’ power,”now argued that a general strike would be impossible because the FTQ would be plagued by hundreds of law-suits. Instead of a call to union-based resistance, Massé called for a return to “social dialogue”. By the beginning of January, Massé had “private meetings” with Charest, soon after which the Minister of Labor announced an increase to the minimum wage. Secret negotiations? Reconciliation? It’s hard to say. Henri Massé has never been a big proponent of mobilization and power balance. It was only when he was pushed by his base that he dared to get his feet wet. Besides, it was less the FTQ that mobilized than its most important public sector unions: SCFP (at the forefront of radical actions) and the SQEES. And besides, there was nothing reassuring about the basic framework of the mobilisation (a constant call to “dialogue and to social peace”). It’s clear that the bureaucrats went into battle under pressure and with reticence. We will no doubt have to wait and see what the other unions will propose, and especially what the base will think of those proposals, in order to know if the movement will revive itself, or whether it was merely a flash in the pan.