18 December 2023
Dear Prime Minister,
I am writing to you today on behalf of the women I represent. Women make of 80% of the 40,000 members of the Fédération du personnel de soutien scolaire (FPSS-CSQ).
It was January 1954, and you were three years old, too young for this to affect you. Maurice Duplessis was the leader of a majority government that had just passed two controversial bills that mobilized the unions: Bills 19 and 20.
Bill 19 was nicknamed the “padlock law” and was meant to obstruct all forms of working-class propaganda. Bill 20 stipulated the decertification of any public sector union, one or more of whose members had encouraged the holding of a strike.
The primary goal of the Duplessis government was to legislate against the unions, to reduce their powers to nothing. Most of all, Duplessis did not want to relinquish control. He hated unions and made it a personal issue. Does this remind you of anybody, Mr. Legault?
When I read about the history of the Duplessis government, I find many similarities with the government you currently lead: a deep hatred of unions, a desire to maintain power and control at all costs, the adopting of highly contested laws, and all this with hardly any opposition.
But you’re forgetting a few details. Several fundamental rights have emerged since the Duplessis era, most of which were fought for and won by women. Women of your mother’s generation, Mr. Legault. They fought incredible battles just to gain full and equal rights for women.
The generation of women sitting at school desks today may think that these are acquired rights, but I don’t believe we should ignore how fragile these hard-won rights really are.
When I hear your hatred for unions at press briefing after press briefing, when I see you pressuring your ministers and MNAs to adopt two bills on major health and education reforms that were highly criticized by both sectors, I can’t help but compare you to Maurice Duplessis.
You believe it’s easier to work with the private sector. We understand your strategy of gradually and stealthily integrating more private individuals into health and education. We see your plan: you want to manage our government like a large private company.
You and your ministers tell anyone who will listen that we need to have more flexibility and we need to slash collective agreements. But I want to tell you that you are stretching the elastic too much and it just might break in your face.
You know, Mr. Legault, that unions emerged to protect workers against precariousness. It’s a word that you are very familiar with, aren’t you? Would you prefer staff shortages? You must agree that the two concepts are hard to separate.
Most of today’s public sector union members are women, but you already know that. Women who still today need to fight to get jobs as prestigious and well-paid as those of men and wait twenty (20) years to achieve pay equity for their jobs. These are women who struggle to make ends meet to feed their families. Women who lose their jobs because they miss too much work taking care of their children. These are the people you are asking for more flexibility. Do you think this makes any sense? Women, simply because they are women, are still the least well paid in Quebec and must continue their mothers’ and grandmothers’ struggle to be paid a decent salary.
These same women are outside picketing today, unpaid, demanding better working conditions for themselves, but more importantly to provide a decent standard of living for their families. You must understand this concept, Mr. Legault. Isn’t this why you gave your own MNAs a 30% raise?
In closing, I would like to warn you, Mr. Prime Minister, that to attack women’s rights is one thing! But you must know they have an annoying habit of being resilient. You are embarking on a slippery slope when you attack their right to negotiate collectively, when you choose to hold firmly to your positions and offer only crumbs, when you attack the contents of collective agreements and the working conditions that protect public sector workers.
These women are united and, believe me, they will go to the barricades to not lose one iota of all the fundamental rights acquired by women, for women, since the Duplessis era.
Go for a walk and talk to some of these women who refuse to give up anything else, but who above all keenly desire more consideration from you. And trust me, they are not ready to return to work. Do you think you will break them? They have fundamental principles and values, dedicated to those they serve every day. You must have noticed that the public is behind them. The voters finally understand who they are dealing with: a man imbued with power with no regard for the opinions of those who elected him.
So, get ready, Mr. Legault. Quebecers are very angry with you, and you will not win this battle!
Éric Pronovost
President of the Fédération du personnel de soutien scolaire (FPSS-CSQ)