MONTREAL — More than 50,000 working people took part in a large union federation-sponsored demonstration here Nov. 29, protesting a series of new laws either adopted or proposed by the Coalition for the Future of Quebec (CAQ) government of Premier Francois Legault.
These laws target the right to strike, the internal democracy of the unions, the working conditions of doctors and the health care system, the rights of immigrants and those of the province’s English-speaking minority. This is a frontal assault on the working class and the oppressed.
The demonstration also denounced the government’s across-the-board cuts on social services.
The protesters came by car and chartered buses from virtually every region of the province, as well as from Ontario and New Brunswick, and some from the United States.
“I’m a member of Unifor,” Alicia Sipocz, an autoworker at Stellantis, told the Militant. “We came on buses from Windsor, Ontario, 110 people in all. Rolling back workers’ rights in Quebec is going to roll back workers’ rights for everybody — union or nonunion!”
In the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference contingent, two train conductors from Canadian National told the Militant why they joined the demonstration. Like thousands of workers across the country over the past year, including postal and port workers, their strike was ended by a federal government back-to-work order.
When Ottawa tried to do the same to 10,000 striking Air Canada flight attendants in August, they defied the order, winning broad support from working people and unionists nationwide and making gains.
“These laws affect me more than people realize,” said rail worker Alexandre Jacob. “Reducing the power of unions reduces the power of all workers. These laws are a blank check to employers and include shameful moves to divide workers.”
The huge protest had a big impact on all those who joined in. It was called by Quebec’s four labor federations and five other sizable unions. It received support from the Quebec Federation of General Practitioners, targeted by one of the CAQ’s recent anti-democratic laws, and from federations representing 4,500 community groups defending women’s rights, access to housing and other social issues.
Farmers came with signs from the Union of Agricultural Producers, which represents the majority of Quebec farmers.
Others joined the action to educate about assaults they’ve faced. A group of immigrants from Mauritania carried a large banner denouncing the racist torture and executions the government there dished out to hundreds of black political prisoners in 1990-91.
Attacks on political rights
Protesters denounced Bills 94 and 21, which would prohibit teachers and other employees in the school system from wearing religious symbols such as a Muslim headscarf or a Jewish kippah. In addition, the Legault government has proposed a new Quebec constitution that would impose “Quebec values” on immigrants, people of different religions and those whose first language isn’t French.
Two days before the demonstration, the government introduced a new bill that further restricts the right to worship for students, teachers and employees in the education system, from kindergarten to university. The pretext for the restriction is to defend “Quebec’s secularism.”
Nawal Chi, a unionist and school secretary in the Montreal school board, held a sign reading, “The woman wearing a headscarf is a human being capable of deciding what to put on her own body. No to law 94 and to law 21. My veil, my choice, my dignity, my freedom of dress.”
“The government wants to divide and rule,” Chi told the Militant. “I am a mom with three children. It’s about human values, not Quebec values. No child has ever asked me at school why I wear a headscarf. They see me as someone who is there to protect them. I’m here so my union will defend me.”
Retirees from Rio Tinto Alcan in the Saguenay region told a Militant worker-correspondent and UNITE HERE member from Pittsburgh about the high rate of bladder cancer among plant workers, a result of toxic chemicals the company uses. They are fighting to regain cost-of-living protection for their pensions.
They discussed the powerful and successful fight U.S. coal miners and their union waged against deadly black lung disease, caused by bosses’ refusal to offer protection against coal and silica dust. The miners organized a revolution in their union, the UMWA, and used it to win control over safety and production, virtually eliminating the disease. But today bosses have weakened the union and the disease has come back.
Unionists who are members of the Communist League got a good response at the protest. “The CAQ is making problems for everyone,” Pierre Germain, a Montreal worker of Haitian origin, told Katy LeRougetel, a member of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union and the Communist League candidate for mayor in the recent Montreal municipal election.
“I was in Alberta last month,” LeRougetel said, “to bring solidarity to 51,000 striking teachers. The provincial government declared their strike illegal, the same way as Ottawa and Quebec City are doing today! This anti-labor assault is being led by Canada’s capitalist rulers as a whole, not just those in Quebec.”
“It’s becoming a war between bosses and workers,” Germain agreed. LeRougetel said, “We need to go further than union battles. Workers need to build a party of our own that can fight for political power, like workers and farmers did in Cuba.”
A contingent of workers came from Beton Provincial, a concrete company that has locked them out since Dec. 5, 2024. They carried a big sign reading, “Beton Provincial demands a four-year wage freeze and no insurance.” Their T-shirts proudly said, “You won’t break us.”
The demonstration shows workers are ready to defend themselves against the bosses and their governments at all levels.