The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.43           November 30, 1998 
 
 
70,000 Teachers In Quebec Strike Over Pay Equity  

BY MICHEL PRAIRIE
MONTREAL, Quebec - More than 70,000 teachers, members of the Centrale de l'enseignement du Québec (CEQ), or Quebec Teachers Federation, walked off the job November 18. Their union approved the job action days earlier, despite an ordinance by the Quebec Essential Services Council threatening them with heavy fines and charges of contempt of court.

This one-day action, the first CEQ work stoppage since 1989, affected one million students from kindergarten to senior high school. It was the latest in a series of initiatives by the labor movement during the current campaign for the November 30 Quebec elections. It has been many years since the unions have been involved in such a number of struggles during a preelection period. This is a reflection of the growing resistance among union members to the severe cuts in social services and programs by the Parti Quebecois (PQ) administration over the last four years.

On October 24, the CEQ organized a demonstration of 15,000 teachers, the biggest labor march in Quebec City in many years.

During the election campaign, members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Quebec distributed one million copies of a four-page glossy newspaper raising questions about the programs of the two main parties running in these elections: the PQ and the Quebec Liberal Party. The Quebec Elections director found the paper too partisan in favor of the PQ and asked for an injunction to prevent its distribution. The Quebec ballot law prevents the union from using its funds to support one or another party running in the election. It also bars unions from giving financial support to any party.

The Confederation of National Trade Unions has also announced other actions during the elections, such as a November 23 demonstration in Mirabel, 30 miles north of Montreal, to support a union organizing drive at the NMF Manufacturing plant. The bosses there are attempting to squash the unionization drive.

The CEQ is demanding what it calls pay equity. Part of this demand is allowing women teachers to reach wage parity with men. Because of their oppression as a second sex, women teachers tend to be more concentrated in the primary and secondary school levels, and since those grades require less education than higher ones, teachers earn less. The CEQ is demanding the recognition of experience in teachers' wage structure so those with less years of education can eventually reach the same wage maximum. The difference could add up to several thousand dollars a year. The CEQ is also demanding wage increases across the board. Quebec teachers earn on average 77 percent of their counterparts in neighboring Ontario.

"The government's current threats against the CEQ represent the most serious attack on the labor movement in Quebec in many years," said Annette Kouri and Michel Dugré, the two candidates of the Communist League in the Quebec elections, in a November 16 statement. "The whole labor movement needs to come to the support of the teachers.

"The Quebec government pretends that the CEQ action would deprive students of a service they are entitled to. But in reality the teachers are the ones defending quality education against the government. They are now on the front lines of the growing resistance by workers against cuts in social services and programs by capitalist governments under the pretext of cutting budget deficits. The teachers mobilizations hurt the capitalist rulers attempts to cut social services in order to maintain their profits."

Through their mobilization for better education, the teachers are also pointing the way forward in the fight against Quebecois national oppression, the two communist candidates said.

On November 8, the Montreal daily La Presse printed the results of a study by the Quebec government showing that Quebecois students lag behind their English-speaking counterparts at school. The study shows that five years after entering high school the proportion of students getting their diploma is around 26 percent higher among anglophones than Quebecois. Natives fair far worse than Quebecois.

"The teachers' mobilizations for better education is key in taking steps in the fight against this aspect of national oppression," Kouri and Dugré stated.

"The limitations on the right of the unions to give their support, including financially, to one or another party represent an unacceptable intrusion by a capitalist government in the life of the unions and a denial of the rights of their members. As the crisis deepens, along with the attacks on our living and working conditions and on our social services, workers will feel more and more the need to act politically independent of the bosses. More workers will try to use our unions to launch our own party, a party that will help unite all workers and fight against unemployment and for Quebec independence. This will be a key instrument in a common struggle with our brothers and sisters across Canada for the establishment of a workers and farmers government in Ottawa."

 
 
 
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