Christmas on the Picket Line

Just before the government’s latest contract offer was rejected by Quebec’s striking teachers on Wednesday, François Legault did a bit of damage control.

The premier had overplayed his hand throughout the strike, trying to bully teachers off the picket line when perhaps a touch of humility would have bought him some goodwill.

Three weeks ago he accused teachers of hurting “our children” and committing “emotional blackmail” only to see his poll numbers sink to new lows. Last week, Legault tried to ratchet up the pressure on union negotiators by telling reporters he expected classes to resume on Monday, Dec. 18. 

They didn’t.

By Wednesday, with signs pointing to yet another rejected contract offer, Legault’s public relations team went into crisis mode.

“With Education Minister (Bernard Drainville) to discuss, among other things, ways we can lighten the load for teachers who have students with learning disabilities,” Legault wrote on X, under a photo of himself and the minister sitting in a boardroom. 

Avec le ministre de l'Éducation @BDrainvilleQc pour discuter entre autres des moyens pour alléger la tâche des enseignants dans les classes où il y a plus d'enfants qui ont des difficultés d'apprentissage. pic.twitter.com/zItnzP0Z0Z

— François Legault (@francoislegault) December 20, 2023

But as he presented his softer, more fatherly side in public, Legault’s government and the education ministry continued to play hardball behind the scenes. And not just at the negotiating table.

While a portion of the 66,000 teachers who remain on strike will receive some vacation pay for Christmas — their first influx of cash in weeks — some will actually end up owing money to their employer. Given that Quebec’s biggest teachers union signed an agreement in principle with the government Thursday, those still on the picket line this Christmas are in dire straits.

Some context: because teachers don’t work in the summer and at Christmas, Quebec’s school centres take a percentage of their pay and put it aside so they can continue receiving a salary during holidays. In most cases, it amounts to about $80 per workday. But since the school centres haven’t been collecting that $80/day during the strike, some are taking that money directly from teachers’ holiday pay.

“This was the only money some of us were going to see until February,” said Vincent, a teacher on strike in the Quebec City region. “Our bosses could have taken their $80-a-day and collected it over several paycheques but they chose to take it all from us at Christmas. If that’s not a pressure tactic, I don’t know what is.”

Indeed, some school centres have chosen to spread out the reimbursement of holiday pay so that teachers will get something before Dec. 25. But thousands of teachers in the Quebec City area won’t get a dime this Christmas, according to documents obtained by The Rover.

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To mitigate the collapse of their finances, some teachers are withdrawing money from their retirement savings while others are working in the gig economy to keep up with their bills. Of the dozen public school teachers who spoke to The Rover, none said they’re willing to give up the fight. Even if it means there won’t be presents under the tree and even if it means using a food bank for the first time in their lives, the teachers say this is nothing less than a fight for the future of public education in Quebec.

While the government may have offered to increase teacher pay and made other small concessions in negotiations, they’ve also put forward proposals that would reduce services to special needs students — a move that could dramatically increase teachers’ workloads. Three sources say the government has tried to add language in the collective bargaining agreement specifying that special needs students would only get help from their school “if the services are available.”

“They were pretty firm about that,” said one union source, who did not want his name published for fear of reprisals. “That means that if there are budget cuts, if there’s a teacher on sick leave or if the school decides to spend money on hockey jerseys instead of services, the school is under no obligation to give kids with learning disabilities extra help.”

The sources claim the government also wants the ability to decide whether high school students on the autism spectrum are eligible for additional learning resources. 

Under the education ministry’s current protocol, a student diagnosed with autism comes with a “code” that gives them access to services like the use of a teacher’s aid, modified curriculum and extra time to complete exams. Most importantly, the code also means that a student on the spectrum counts as more than one student when the ministry calculates student-to-teacher ratios.

“The government proposal was that the code for an autistic student would be removed if the student was able to be admitted to an enrichment program like a sports team or advanced science class,” one source said. 

“So if the student is good at science, for instance, the government no longer considers them autistic. Even if they’re struggling in other classes, even if it’s those special services that helped them get good at science, they’ll be treated as any other student would be. That’s a huge mistake.”

One special education technician says a group of principals at his school service centre have pushed to remove the “code” of any special needs student who got fewer than 10 hours of services a week.

“I have 500 kids in my care and I work 32.5 hours a week, none of them get 10 hours a week,” said the educator, who did not want his name published for fear of reprisals. “At this point, they’ll do anything to make it look better on paper. So if you remove “codes” from thousands of kids across the province, all of a sudden it’s not 30 or 40 per cent of our students that have learning disabilities but maybe 20 or 25. At least, on paper.

“Of course, that’s just an accounting trick from an accountant premier. Some of the kids who need us may go away on paper but they’ll still be there every day in our schools.”

The Coalition Avenir Quebec government is not commenting on negotiations (that’s been the government’s policy for decades). But in public statements, Legault has acknowledged the Quebec government needs to do more to help special needs students and secure better working conditions for teachers. 

Last fall, the premier and Drainville were on hand for the inauguration of a $77 million school for neurodivergent students in Montreal’s East End.  The minister has also offered to hire 19,000 people across the public school network to assist teachers with classroom management. And after five years at the helm, Legault’s government has increased starting salaries for teachers from $45,000 to $54,000 a year. Teachers also say the CAQ has put forth more money for activities and athletics in school than their predecessors.

Still, the province’s educators remain among the lowest paid in Canada, with thousands leaving the profession every year. Even in an environment where the government has reduced its standards to “any adult with a high school diploma can teach,” there were still 8,500 teaching vacancies across the province when this school year began.

And while the premier says he’s open to increasing his offer of a 12.5 per cent pay raise over five years, union leaders contend that the increase doesn’t even keep pace with inflation. It also does nothing to address poor work conditions that produce some of the lowest graduation rates in Canada.

“A lot of people see this as the last chance negotiation, ça passe ou ça casse,” said Jonathan St-Pierre, a high school teacher in the Abitibi region. “The longer these negotiations are drawn out, the more of us will simply leave the profession. Right now, the public system is missing thousands of qualified teachers across the province. Can we really afford to lose more?

“Some people have asked, ‘Why are you trying to fix everything in these negotiations? Why not make incremental gains and fight for more gains at the next contract negotiations?’ That’s what we’ve been doing for the past 30 years. What’s happening now is nothing less than the collapse of a system that’s been running on duct tape and Band-Aids for years.”

Fundamentally, the most disparate point between the teachers and the ministry won’t be resolved in this round of negotiations. Teachers want Quebec to open specialized schools that help kids with learning disabilities instead of warehousing them in the public system. This was how education in the province worked until successive Parti Québécois and Liberal governments shuttered these adapted education centres over 20 years ago. 

Ironically, this goes back to when Legault was education minister for the PQ during in 2002.

In a sign of just how desperate the struggle has become, hundreds of striking teachers gathered at the Port of Montreal around 5 a.m. Thursday and blocked access to the site. Teachers in Quebec City coordinated their own blockade of the capital region’s commercial port that morning, delaying hundreds of truck shipments.

Though some pundits have speculated this might hurt teachers in the court of public opinion, a Léger marketing poll published this week suggests they have political capital to spare. Some 56 per cent of Quebecers support the strike and that number increases to 63 per cent among parents with a child in public school.

Earlier this month, thousands of Quebecers donated cash, food, clothing, diapers and gift certificates for gas and groceries for the striking teachers. On Saturday there will be another 10 massive Christmas drives in support of the teachers and support staff.

Opposition to the government is spreading across Quebec’s notoriously combative unions. Last week, the province’s ironworkers announced they’d be donating $100,000 to the striking teachers and to the 420,000 public sector workers mobilizing for better conditions.

“The workers, an overwhelming majority of whom are women, are holding together our public services, they’re taking care of our kids, our elders and the entirety of our population,” said Dominic Lemieux, president of the Syndicat des Métallos. “During this period of suffocating inflation, these workers are refusing to impoverish themselves and they demand respect from their employer. Like the majority of Quebecers, our members back the workers with all our hearts.” 

With only 36 per cent of Quebecers supporting the government’s position and just 25 per cent backing his party, Legault is facing his first major crisis of confidence in five years. The premier had previously enjoyed the highest approval rating of any premier in Canada throughout the majority of his time in office. 

Even when emergency rooms were overflowing and the province couldn’t staff its public schools, Legault had always managed to use wedge politics to change the conversation. It’s only been in the past three months that chickens have finally come home to roost.

And while a deal may be imminent, Legault will emerge from this battle a wounded and desperate man.

“The premier is good at politics but no amount of message control or good PR will change the facts on the ground,” St-Pierre said. “People aren’t so easily fooled. They know how bad the system is, they’ve seen what our classrooms look like, some of them have had their kids on a waiting list to get an autism diagnosis through the school for three years. 

“You can’t spin this or repackage it. It’s broken and everyone who’s remotely paying attention knows that to be true.”

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