Close to 600,000 Quebec public sector workers were on strike Thursday to secure inflation-busting wage increases, end punishing working conditions and resist the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) provincial government’s attempt to extort further contract concessions.
Thursday’s job action was one of the largest in Quebec, or for that matter, Canadian history.
Those off the job (or in the case of health care workers designated “essential employees” who joined pre- or post-work picket lines) included:
*420,000 hospital workers, medical technicians, public school teachers and school support staff, CEGEP (junior and technical college) personnel and social affairs workers affiliated with the Common Front inter-union alliance;
*80,000 nurses, nurses’ aides and other health care workers for whom the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé (FIQ) is their bargaining agent;
*and 65,000 public school teachers who are members of the FAE (the Autonomous Teachers’ Federation).
For the workers affiliated with the Common Front, Thursday was the final day of a three-day province wide walkout. FIQ—which has refused to participate in Common Front protests based on the false, sectional claim that nurses are a “special case”—has limited its members to a two-day walkout ending Friday.
The FAE, which is also angling for a separate deal with the government, has ceded to rank-and-file pressure and called the first unlimited Quebec teacher strike since 1983.
Not only are the public sector workers...
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