PV staff
Workers in Quebec entered the new year girding for battle against the right-wing Coalition Avenir Québec government of François Legault, which has unleashed an array of anti-people and anti-union laws.
These laws constitute one of the worst attacks on the labour movement since Quebec’s 1937 Padlock Law and are comparable to the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act which was used to restrict labour activities and power in the US.
Legault’s Bill 89 seeks to undermine the right to free bargaining by limiting the right to strike, while Bill 3 aims to block all social and political action by unions in order to prevent them from energizing democratic and popular struggles.
Moreover, all of these laws are only a prelude: the CAQ has not hesitated to hint at the possibility of attacking the Rand formula.
These attacks come at a time when Quebec’s organized working class has distinguished itself through its combativeness and dynamism, as evidenced by the Common Front’s struggle in the autumn of 2023. It is also in Quebec that intense labour struggles and dynamic union activity have forced the ruling class to concede important social gains. By attacking union rights, the CAQ is attacking these gains.
But the union movement is fighting back. More than 50,000 working people gathered in a powerful demonstration on November 29, and more mobilization is planned. A strong movement of labour progressive forces will be able to build on the November rally to block the employer attacks, but also to extend democratic and trade union rights.
This is not strictly a Quebec issue: the ruling class across the country is closely monitoring these developments. They know how much a defeat in Quebec would give them free rein to crush trade union and democratic rights across the country. It is important to move beyond solidarity in words to solidarity in action by maintaining and building trade union militancy across Canada, to keep reactionary employer forces at bay.
Such worker solidarity not only allows us to win important battles. It also builds strong working-class unity among different nations in Canada. Whether among Indigenous peoples and nations, Quebecers, Acadians or English-speaking Canadians, working people have more in common with one another, despite national divisions, than with their ‘own’ ruling class.
Solidarity with Quebec workers! An injury to one is an injury to all!
[Photo: CSN]
Support working-class media!
If you found this article useful, please consider donating to People’s Voice or purchasing a subscription so that you get every issue of Canada’s leading socialist publication delivered to your door or inbox!
For over 100 years, we have been 100% reader-supported, with no corporate or government funding.
