Quebec unions, opposition parties decry bill that would force striking employees back to work
If passed, bill would ensure minimum services are maintained in schools, municipalities
Quebec Labour Minister Jean Boulet has tabled a bill aimed at maintaining certain public services in the case of a labour conflict.
Boulet told reporters at the National Assembly Wednesday that Bill 89 "gives more consideration to the needs of the population."
It would allow the government to maintain services that it considers important to the well-being of the population in the event of a strike or a lockout.
He said the health-care and public sectors are being excluded from the bill, but that education, municipal services and some private sectors are covered.
But the province's unions and opposition parties have already come out strongly against the bill, saying it overreaches and is counter-productive to workers fighting for their rights and better conditions.
Québec Solidaire's labour critic, Alexandre Leduc, accused Boulet of taking revenge on public sector employees for their large-scale strike in 2023.
"Why is he doing this?" Leduc said. "I'm not sure that there isn't a little bit of revenge in this." He called the bill "illegal" and said he believed its constitutionality would be challenged in court.
"He's just shopping for a lawsuit for the next five to 10 years and then it will have to go to the Supreme Court. He knows that," Leduc said.
Éric Gingras, the president of the CSQ, an umbrella union representing most public-sector workers in the province, called the bill "a disruption in the balance of labour relations acquired at great cost through union struggles, particularly in the courts, over the past few years."
Magali Picard, president of the FTQ, a construction union, compared Boulet's bill to anti-union tactics of former Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, a Catholic conservative who was in power from 1944 to 1959.
"The CAQ is proposing a return to the Great Darkness," Picard said.
The bill defines the services that could be maintained as those minimally required to prevent the "population's social, economic or environmental security from being disproportionately affected, in particular that of persons in vulnerable situations."
Boulet said he was inspired by strikes in recent years, such as the labour conflict that lasted years at the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery and resulted in human remains being unearthed by animals and put major delays on mourners being able to bury their loved ones.
He also cited the hypothetical situation of an education strike preventing services to children with special needs. Boulet said strikes involving ferries, food transformation and school transit in Quebec were other examples that led his office to draft the bill.
Boulet said he wanted Quebec to have similar powers to the federal government, when it forced a return to work for striking Canada Post workers. That decision is currently being contested in the courts.
Written by Verity Stevenson with files from Cathy Senay and Radio-Canada's Jérôme Labbé