Introduction
I thought it useful to look at what I consider an exaggeration of the historical importance of the recent massive strikes in Quebec, and I why I consider it an exaggeration. I first look at John Clarke’s article on of the alleged historical importance of the massive strikes, and then I consider the ideology expressed by one of the union leaders of the strikes, Robert Comeau. I finally look at this ideology and indicate how it lacks a critical approach to collective bargaining.
John Clarke’s Claim
John Clarke, former major organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, recently had this article published:
Front Commun picket line, Quebec. Photo: Syndicat des enseignantes et enseignants du Cégep de l’Outaouais (SEECO), Facebook
Huge, co-ordinated strike action by workers in Quebec echoes a wave of militancy from fifty years ago, and points the way towards a decisive battle against austerity, argues John Clarke
As I write this, 420,000 public-sector workers in Quebec are nearing the end of a seven-day strike against the right-wing provincial government of François Legault. This huge round in the struggle grew out of previous actions and was unleashed as the ‘latest push to get the Quebec government to pay them more and improve their working conditions.’
The week-long strike, conducted by a coalition of unions known as the Front commun, unfolded as teachers from the Fédération autonome de l’enseignement(FAE) continued an unlimited strike that has been underway since 23 November. The leaders of the Front commun have made clear that a more decisive challenge to the Legault government is likely.
The Front commununions have scheduled two days of meetings later in December and Robert Comeau, the president of the Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux (APTS), has suggested that this should be seen by the government as an opportunity to table an acceptable offer. ‘If not, we’ll have no choice but to take stock of the situation with our members and we don’t see any other solution other than a general unlimited strike.’
The Front communhas refused to accept a 12.5% pay increase over five years as ‘a step back’ that they will resist. The Fédération Interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec, (FIQ), representing 80,000 nurses and other health-care professionals has rejected a similar offer and the teachers have also refused proposals from the government that fell short. At this point, Legault is suggesting that larger pay increases are possible but they would have to be tied to ‘flexibility from the unions interms of scheduling.’
The combined actions of the Front commun and the other public-sector unions have involved 570,000 workers, making it the largest strike action in Canadian history. There is enormous support in the general population for the struggle to defend workers’ rights and safeguard public services. ‘A poll this summer shows that 87 percent of Quebecers agree that the government needs to improve public-sector working conditions, 86 percent agree that public-sector salaries should at least be indexed to the cost of living, and 75 percent agree that improved conditions will result in improved public services.’
At the same time, Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government is seeing a major decline in its popularity and it is strikingly losing support in areas that have been its strongholds. Decades of austerity and social cutbacks have now been compounded by the cost-of-living crisis of the recent period and, in this situation, a lead given by striking workers is resonating among wider layers of working-class people. There is a widespread understanding that a major and decisive fight back is not only necessary but long overdue.
The powerful strikes underway in Quebec are both a necessary response by the workers directly involved and a call to action to others impacted by the same assault on their living standards and past gains. Without doubt, the ‘strike’s outcome will not only affect the involved workers but could also set a precedent for future labor movements in the province and beyond.’
Militant history
The present round of struggle in Quebec is in many ways a rediscovery of a militant past. In the 1970s, an earlier generation of public-sector workers took up a fight that shook the governing authorities and created a legacy of working-class resistance that has never been extinguished. This struggle took place in the midst of a very turbulent period in the life of the province. ‘The Quebec workers’ militancy, radical politics, and campaign for an independent Quebec in the 1960s and 1970s shocked many observers across the country. Unions had grown in strength during the post-war period in the face of ‘strenuous corporate resistance backed by Maurice Duplessis’ extreme anti-union provincial government.’
The union alliance of that time was linked to the La Presse strike that unfolded in 1971. Workers from several different unions organised a mass march in solidarity with the strikers and it was ‘brutally suppressed by police, leading to riots that wounded many and resulted in the killing of Michele Gauthier, a student activist.’
The police repression, however, ‘created common ground for the coming together of normally competitive and divided unions … The Common Front of 1972 was an alliance between the Confederation of National Trade Unions, the Quebec Federation of Labour and the Quebec Teachers Corporation as well as several smaller unions to present a united set of demands during negotiations with the provincial government.’
Representing 84% of public-sector workers, the alliance demanded an 8% wage increase, a minimum wage for all categories and improved working conditions. ‘When the government was unwilling to cede to these demands, the Common Front struck, and on April 11, 1972, 210 000 workers walked off the job.’
In the uncertain economic conditions of the time and, faced with the growth of the nationalist Parti Québécois, the Liberal Quebec government of Robert Bourassa decided that the ‘swelling wave of change that was sweeping Quebec society… needed breaking’ and it decided to crush the strike.
Striking hospital workers were hit with court injunctions, with thirteen of them imprisoned for six months and fined the equivalent of a year’s wages. ‘Overall, 103 workers were sentenced to a total of 24 years and fined half a million dollars during a few days.’ Legislation was then passed that ‘forced unionized workers back to work and banned all fundamental trade union rights for two years.’
When the three union leaders, Louis Laberge, Marcel Pépin and Yvon Charbonneau, urged workers to defy the legislation, they were arrested and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. ‘The profound unfairness of sending the three men to jail triggered popular outrage across Quebec’s working class.’
The upsurge continued to build and over ‘the month of May, work stoppages broke out across the province in public and private workplaces – construction and metal workers, miners, machinists, auto and textile workers, salespeople, print-shop employees, the staff of major news media, teachers and some hospital workers.’ The level of militancy went beyond defiant strike action and involved widespread occupations. ‘Radio and television stations were occupied by the union members, who broadcast their messages.’
This explosive situation forced ‘the government to back down. The labour leaders were released from jail after serving four months and many of the Common Front’s demands were agreed to during negotiations.’ To this day, union density in Quebec ‘remains among the highest in the country.’
Today’s struggles
The class battles of the 1970s are casting their shadow over the present fight against the Legault government. It is a political formation that has shown its readiness to impose an austerity agenda and that will do all it can to undermine the rights of public-sector workers and decimate the services that they deliver.
Yet, five decades after workers in Quebec unleashed one of the most significant struggles in North American trade-union history, the lines are drawn again. Already public-sector workers have taken strike action on a scale even greater than in the 70s, and they are on the verge of taking the struggle to entirely new levels.
At moments like this, the need for rank-and-file pressure to ensure trade-union leaders don’t settle for less than is necessary is always at a premium. However, the workers within the Front commun unions are determined to make real gains, and they are backed by massive support in the broader working class. Without a retreat by the Legault government, an unlimited strike and a decisive class battle is looming in Quebec.
Robert Comeau’s Ideology of Free and Equitable Collective Bargaining
Let us take a look at what Robert Comeau, leader of APTS, has to say about collective bargaining and, implicitly, collective agreements. From https://aptsq.com/en/news/public-sector-contract-talks-apts-signs-its-new-collective-agreement/ :
“This round of bargaining is now behind us. We’re gearing up for the next round that will kick off this fall when we table our demands with the Québec government in October. Once again, our focus will be to ensure that everyone we represent, in all job titles and all areas of the health and social services system, obtains due recognition for the value of their work. Our members’ diversity is our strength. Together, we’ll attain the highest gains for professional and technical employees,” concluded Robert Comeau.
Comeau’s implicit view is that, if the workers receive “due recognition for the value of their work,” then “this round of bargaining” will be fair. The issue of the limited control of workers over their own work–and the control of work of other workers in all other areas–is, from this point of view, irrelevant. The fact that such workers, although professional and technical, form part of a cog in the bureaucatic machine called the Canadian government is irrelevant.
Let us take a look at the signed collective agreement. On page 16, it reads:
ARTICLE 4
MANAGEMENT RIGHTS
The Union recognizes the Employer’s right to exercise executive, administrative and
management duties. This right must be exercised in a manner that is compatible with
the provisions of this collective agreement.4.02 Upon request, the Employer gives the Union a copy of written regulations concerning
staff, along with any amendments, if such regulations exist.4.03 Any provision in a regulation that is incompatible with the current collective
agreement is null and void.
Now, it is certainly true that the logic of events may go beyond the intentions of union leadership. When Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Canada, tried to use the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to prevent any legal challenge to the Bill 28, the draconian piece of legislation that legally forced striking education workers to return to work before they even started to strike, there was stiff resistance even from union leaders; in that situation, the logic of events could have well out-stripped the intentions of the union leaders and become a general strike and much more radical.
Is there any comparable situation in Quebec? Clarke provides only references to past struggles, without taking into account the present ideology and limtiations of the union leaders.
Again, let us look at what Robert Comeau has said concerning the nature and fairness of collective bargaining. From https://aptsq.com/en/news/bad-faith-bargaining-and-interference-in-union-activities-apts-takes-the-government-to-court/ :
BAD-FAITH BARGAINING AND INTERFERENCE IN UNION ACTIVITIES: APTS TAKES THE GOVERNMENT TO COURT
June 01, 2023
Longueuil – Today the Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux (APTS) announced legal action against the Legault government to defend workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively. The union asserts that the management side is bargaining in bad faith and has interfered in union activities by unilaterally imposing a bonus that applies only to certain youth protection workers − right in the middle of contract talks − to cover the cost of belonging to a professional order.
“After we refused this inequitable offer, the health and social services ministry short-circuited employees’ right to negotiate their working conditions. We are taking legal action to protect the right to organize and freely engage in fair and equitable collective bargaining, [my emphasis]” declared Robert Comeau, president of the APTS.
The government is essentially restricting its offer to the youth protection assessment and referral sector. The APTS sees this offer as far too limited, given the extent of the problems in attracting and retaining workers in all areas of health and social services.
“We would have been ready to explore this proposal − as a pilot project – if it had been offered to all youth centres in the first instance, then to other sectors in health and social services, as our members requested. But in the thick of public-sector contract talks, the ministry chose to impose its own measure instead of seeking a compromise. We can’t let this go by. It’s a flagrant violation of the principles of collective bargaining,” added Robert Comeau.
By unilaterally changing the working conditions of youth protection workers, the CAQ government once again showed its arrogance and insistence on running things its own way. And after being found guilty last year of interfering in union activities, it had the nerve to commit the same violation. “We can’t negotiate with a government that imposes its own priorities without being open to employees’ demands. The APTS represents more than 65,000 professionals and technicians, and we’ll keep fighting on every front to win better working conditions for all of them, whatever their profession or sector,” concluded Robert Comeau.
The APTS
The APTS (Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux) represents more than 65,000 members who play a key role in ensuring that health and social services institutions run smoothly. Our members provide a wide range of services for the population as a whole, including diagnostic, rehabilitation, nutrition, psychosocial intervention, clinical support, and prevention services.
It must be said that APTS indeed should have called out the government for its unilateral attempt to undercut the collective-bargaining process of all workers in APTS by offering, outside the collective-bargaining process, only a section of the workers a bonus–a divide-and rule tactic. However, such opposition to government tactics does not justify the assertion stated above:
to protect the right to organize and freely engage in fair and equitable collective bargaining,” declared Robert Comeau, president of the APTS.
What does this mean? Do workers actually “freely” engage in collective bargaining with employers? They would do so only if the relation between workers and employers were itself a free relation. The relation between employers and workers, however, involves treating workers as things to be used for purposes not defined by the workers themselves (see The Money Circuit of Capital).
And what does “equitable collective bargaining” mean? If workers are unfree, how can any collective-bargaining process be “equitable?”
Equity, in any case, is linked to equality in the sense that equity involves taking into consideration differences in circumstances so that equality results practically in the concrete circumstances. What, however, are these concrete circumstances in the case of workers and employers?
Freedom and Equality in the Context of a Class of Employers Is Ideology
This pairing of freedom and equity (equality) by Comeau, in fact, expresses the ideology of capitalist society. From Arash Abazari (2020), Hegel’s Ontology of Power: The Structure of Domination in Capitalism, page 18:
… people’s belief that they are equal and free in capitalism is ideology, since
such belief is grounded in the social relations that are essential to capitalism;
capitalism cannot possibly exist without the belief of people that they
are free and equal.
These two aspects of capitalist ideology are partially consitutive of the class power of employers. Page 18:
The belief of people in equality and freedom in capitalism is embodied in the relation of exchange of commodities and in the legal contract that enforces it. Thus, the institution of exchange and the institution of contract have an ideational component, so to speak, and
cannot possibly exist without it.
These two aspects of capitalist ideology involve both systematic and necessary aspects. Page 18:
The necessity of ideology can be expressed in two logically interdependent aspects: systematic and functional. The necessity of ideology is systematic, in the sense that it fundamentally coheres with the essential structure or the totality of society. The
belief in equality and freedom in capitalism strongly coheres with the institution of law, with the institution of the market, and with the capitalist political state. The necessity of ideology is functional, in the sense that ideology has a proper function within the totality of society, a proper function that contributes to the self-maintenance and self-reproduction of
society.
These two elements of ideology, like all ideology, cannot be eliminated by mere arguments or education but only through changing the social relations of workers as they produce their own lives. Page 19:
In contrast to mere cognitive failures – mere cognitive failures that we can designate, for the sake of clarity, as “errors” – ideology in the Marxian conception is a necessary illusion. That is to say, ideology cannot be wiped out through education, through enlightened reasoning, or through some voluntary resolution to think critically. I may have read all three volumes of Marx’s Capital, and may have completely understood why equality and
freedom in capitalism are ideology; yet I cannot help acting upon those very ideas: whenever I engage in an economic transaction – and that includes not only buying consumer goods, but also selling my laborpower on a daily basis – no matter what I think, practically I act on the basis of the ideas of equality and freedom; which is to say, I am not at any rate in a position to undo my illusions. Thus, in contrast to the enlightened
tradition, which focuses on education, for Marx the only way that the ideological illusions can be removed is through a collective emancipatory praxis, a collective emancipatory praxis aiming at changing the very social relations in which those illusions are institutionalized.
The ideology of freedom and equality also grips workers, citizens, immigrants and migrant workers because it is not simply false. Page 19:
The distinction between error and illusion is helpful in grasping the truth-content of ideology. While error is plainly false – the belief in the young Earth is plainly false – ideology is a kind of falsity that contains a moment of truth.
Ideology is both true and false. Page 20:
Capitalist society appears to individuals as a system of equality and freedom, and in a certain sense this is indeed true. If individuals were not equal and free, they could not engage in market transactions. And yet, in capitalism the equality and freedom that obtains in the market is only a surface-appearance of a deeper essence, a deeper essence that is defined in terms of inequality and domination. Thus construed, the ideology of
equality and freedom is both true and false. Ideology is true insofar as it is conceived as a surface-appearance that exists on its own. And it is false insofar as it is conceived as a surface-appearance of an essence, as a semblance of an essence that conceals the essence.Alternatively, we may express the same point in the following way. The institution of the market, which operates on the basis of equality and freedom, is not all that there is to capitalism. Rather, the market functions as a moment of the totality of capital, as a moment that systematically and functionally coheres with the totality of capital. The ideology of equality and freedom thus is true insofar as the market is conceived in isolation
from the totality of capital. However, the ideology of equality and freedom becomes false insofar as it is conceived as a moment of capital, as a moment that does not exist on its own, or for its own sake, but as a moment that both coheres with the totality of capital and contributes to its self-maintenance.
Comeau’s views concerning free and equitable collective bargaining express a reified consciousness, and its critique requires a “remembering” of collective bargaining in the totality of the employer-worker relation:
As reified consciousness is marked by forgetfulness, the critique of reified consciousness (or the critique of ideology) consists exactly in the act of “remembering,” the act of remembering that shows the systematic interconnection of ideology with the totality of
essence. Thus, a successful critique of ideology does not simply point out some inconsistencies, or absurdities, or insufficiencies in ideology, but requires a thorough analysis of the totality, of which ideology is a moment. The critique of ideology is thus not a moralistic critique; it is rather … an “explanatory critique,” a critique that functions by means of the explanation of the systematic interconnection of ideology with totality.
Comeau, of course, expresses the limitations of many trade unionists, who present collective bargaining as fair and, by implication, fair and equitable (see for example Fair Contracts (or Fair Collective Agreements): The Ideological Rhetoric of Canadian Unions, Part One: The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)).
Conclusion
Clarke, in his article, claims that there will be a “decisive class battle.” I sincerely doubt it. Even if the workers and unions are militant, they generally will probably operate within the limits of “free and equitable collective bargaining.”
Clarke, like much of the left, fails to see the need for persistent ideological struggle in order to battle against reified forms of consciousness, such as the ideology of freedom and equality in general and the ideology of free and equal collective bargaining in particular. We need to bring out, or remember, the totality of which collective bargaining is a part and not idealize it–which is what the social-democratic or social reformist left generally do.
The Abolitionary 