On Saturday, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Montreal\u2019s Place du Canada to protest the Quebec government\u2019s recent legislation targeting unions and the right to strike.<\/p>\n
The protest, organized by several major labour organizations in the province, drew an estimated 50,000 people and ended with a rally in front of Premier Fran\u00e7ois Legault\u2019s Montreal office.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want the government to understand that the middle class, workers, community groups, the people, need a government that listens and works with them,\u201d said Magali Picard, president of the Qu\u00e9bec Federation of Labour (FTQ), ahead of Saturday\u2019s protest.<\/p>\n
Legault\u2019s Coalition Avenir Qu\u00e9bec (CAQ) government has passed multiple pieces of controversial legislation targeting the province\u2019s workers this year.<\/p>\n
In October, the CAQ passed Bill 101<\/a>, which introduced changes to the workplace health and safety system that critics say creates a two-tier system for workers in healthcare, education and social services. Later that month, the government passed Bill 2<\/a>, imposing a new contract on Quebec\u2019s doctors that ties their salaries to performance targets and fines physicians for protesting the changes. Ontario and New Brunswick have since seen a surge in license applications<\/a> from doctors in Quebec.<\/p>\n But there are two particular pieces of legislation that are seen as an attack on the entire labour movement.<\/p>\n Law 14 (formerly Bill 89)<\/p>\n Saturday\u2019s massive rally was held on the eve of Law 14 coming into force. Formerly known as Bill 89<\/a>, the law amends Quebec\u2019s Labour Code \u201cto give greater consideration to the needs of the population in the event of a strike or a lock-out,\u201d per its official English title.<\/p>\n It allows the government to suspend the right to strike or lock out, in order to ensure that services guaranteeing the population\u2019s \u201csocial, economic or environmental security\u201d are not disproportionately affected.<\/p>\n Law 14 also gives the province\u2019s Minister of Labour the ability to order binding arbitration in situations where a conciliator or mediator hasn\u2019t been successful and a strike or lock-out \u201ccauses or threatens to cause serious or irreparable injury to the population.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBill 14 infringes on workers\u2019 right to strike, disrupts the balance of labour relations, and places too much power in the hands of the Minister of Labour,\u201d the leaders of five major unions, representing over one million workers in Quebec, said in a joint statement<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n Finn Makela, a law professor at the Universit\u00e9 de Sherbrooke, said Law 14\u2019s strike-breaking powers are likely a direct result of the frustration the CAQ government felt over the Common Front<\/a>, a coalition of four major union federations representing mainly education and healthcare workers \u2014 the aforementioned FTQ, along with the Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration des syndicats nationaux, the Centrale des syndicats du Qu\u00e9bec and Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la sant\u00e9 et des services sociaux \u2014 that staged a series of job actions over the winter of 2023-24. At one point, more than half a million workers in Quebec were on strike.<\/p>\n Makela said when the teachers went on a 22-day strike as part of the Common Front, the Legault government didn\u2019t bother tabling back-to-work legislation.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were kind of stuck with the teachers, and ended up, I think, probably paying more to the Common Front than they had originally intended, and they felt that legally they couldn\u2019t force them back to work,\u201d explained Makela.<\/p>\n Since a 2015 Supreme Court of Canada ruling<\/a> that found the right to strike is covered by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,<\/a> most back-to-work legislation that\u2019s been ordered in Quebec has been challenged by unions on the grounds that it\u2019s unconstitutional.<\/p>\n On Monday, a coalition of unions in Quebec announced<\/a> that they filed coordinated legal challenges to Law 14.<\/p>\n Bill 3<\/p>\n This piece of legislation concerns union dues, which are the payments deducted from the paycheque of every worker in a bargaining unit to fund collective bargaining, legal representation and educational opportunities. In Canada, dues are generally mandatory for all workers in a unionized workplace, regardless of whether or not they signed union cards.<\/p>\n Bill 3<\/a> seeks to split union dues into \u201cprincipal\u201d dues, which would be mandatory, and \u201coptional\u201d dues. The details of the optional dues would have to be presented to a union\u2019s membership at least once a year and put to a secret-ballot vote.<\/p>\n A union could draw from only its optional dues to fund legal cases that don\u2019t directly concern a collective agreement or condition of employment. Any support the union provides to a political campaign, advertising campaign or social movement would also have to come from the optional dues. (Alberta implemented a similar set<\/a> of rules in 2022.)<\/p>\n Additionally, the bill would require every union to produce a yearly report detailing how much it receives in optional and principal dues, the expenses of every person who holds an elected position in it, all expenses exceeding $5,000 and any expenses made using optional dues. Unions would have to make these reports available on request, free of charge, to every worker they represent.<\/p>\n The bill, which is still under consideration, has been condemned by union leaders across the province.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bill imposes measures that are impossible to apply, including the requirement for voting to be over 24-hour periods on recurring decisions, as well as an arbitrary division of union dues that directly limits the ability of unions to challenge government laws and decisions that infringe on fundamental rights,\u201d Julie Bouchard, president of the F\u00e9d\u00e9ration interprofessionnelle de la sant\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec (FIQ), which represents healthcare workers, said in a statement last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n The FTQ\u2019s Picard has called it a \u201cdirect attack on workers\u2019 freedom of expression and association.\u201d<\/p>\n Makela said it is unclear how unions are expected to conform to the proposed legislation. He said the distinctions the bill draws between which legal cases or social movements could be funded using principal dues are strange, since the scope of the Charter \u2014 which protects people from discrimination on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, disability and other factors \u2014 is so broad.<\/p>\n When speaking to the press during the CAQ convention in September, Labour Minister Jean Boulet singled out<\/a> the legal challenge to Quebec\u2019s secularism law by a federation of teachers\u2019 unions, which he claims was done \u201cwithout the approval of its members.\u201d<\/p>\n The F\u00e9d\u00e9ration autonome de l\u2019enseignement (FAE), which includes nine teachers\u2019 unions, has joined a Supreme Court challenge<\/a> of what Makela describes as the \u201ccentrepiece legislation of the CAQ\u201d: Bill 21,<\/a> introduced in 2019 with the help of the notwithstanding clause, which bans the wearing of religious symbols by public workers.<\/p>\n While the wording of the bill concerns workers wearing \u201costentatious religious symbols,\u201d critics have said<\/a> that workers wearing Muslim headscarves are most likely to be targeted by the law.<\/p>\n Makela said the government\u2019s position that unions have no place fighting laws that have nothing to do with working conditions is \u201ca farce, because, of course, blocking hiring, transfer and promotion of Muslim workers is a labour issue.\u201d<\/p>\n The CAQ has recently introduced legislation that would expand Quebec\u2019s secularism regime<\/a> to ban religious symbols in subsidized daycares and the education system.<\/p>\n Makela pointed out that unions are sometimes in the position of defending laws, or are required to participate in constitutional challenges in order to continue their efforts to unionize new workplaces, as in a 2006 case<\/a> in which UFCW had to address Walmart\u2019s contention that a section of Quebec\u2019s Labour Code ran afoul of the Charter.<\/p>\n \u201cBut under the new regime, they wouldn\u2019t be allowed to participate in that litigation, unless, of course, they used it from their special dues,\u201d explained Makela. \u201cYou can\u2019t know in advance when some multinational corporation is going to challenge Quebec\u2019s laws. So how are you going to fund the litigation?\u201d<\/p>\n Even if the language of the legislation is vague and contains loopholes, Makela said the additional work required to conform to the law, and the uncertainty around it, would likely still have an impact.<\/p>\n \u201cIt still has a chilling effect,\u201d said Makela. \u201cEvery time a union wants to do something, they have to say, \u2018Okay, well, which budget do we take this from?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Makela said the future for both pieces of legislation is unclear, especially with a provincial election set for next year. The FTQ has reportedly<\/a> been meeting with Quebec\u2019s opposition parties to push them to commit to repealing the laws if elected.<\/p>\n Legal challenges are also possible (and in the case of Law 14, currently under way), but Makela said given the restrictions that Bill 3 places on a union\u2019s ability to challenge the province\u2019s laws in court, such an undertaking could be difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s really good arguments for the unconstitutionality of portions of both of these laws,\u201d said Makela. \u201cNot saying they\u2019re slam dunks, but there\u2019s good constitutional arguments to say that they\u2019re unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Correction: A passage in this article has been amended to clarify that Finn Makela was alluding to a case involving UFCW and Walmart that was heard by Quebec\u2019s labour board in 2006<\/a>, rather than to a later case<\/a> that didn\u2019t involve a question of constitutional validity.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Our journalism is powered by readers like you.<\/p>\n We\u2019re an award-winning non-profit news organization that covers topics like social and economic inequality, big business and labour, and right-wing extremism.<\/p>\n Help us build so we can bring to light stories that don\u2019t get the attention they deserve from Canada\u2019s big corporate media outlets.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n