Teachers’ union recalls dark days of Bill 142

BY MARC LALONDE

marc.lalonde@transcontinental.ca

Teachers from the Lester B. Pearson were out in force last Wednesday afternoon in a public demonstration near Fairview Pointe Claire shopping centre designed to call attention to a controversial law that limits their right to protest what they call a “draconian� law that prevents them from any form of organized protest at work until 2010.

“It’s a repressive, draconian law,� said Pearson Teachers’ Union president Serge Laurendeau. “It removes teachers’ right to strike and dictates working conditions. We are not allowed to have any concerted action.�

The law was passed Dec. 16, 2005 — on the anniversary of the last legal teachers’ strike in Quebec (1982). Teachers, union executive members and unions themselves can get slapped with fines ranging from $100 to $125,000 for any concerted protest action, pressure tactic or boycott of activities a provincial representative said was designed to protect students and parents from those actions.

The provincial government imposed a collective-bargaining agreement on the province’s teachers last year after the previous one expired in 2002.

Teachers, are, however, allowed to protest on their own time — prompting the lively protest at the corner of St. John’s and Brunswick boulevards in Pointe Claire near the height of rush hour, thereby ensuring maximum visibility on a crowded artery.

“We needed a show of solidarity to tell the government that teachers wouldn’t forget what they have done to us,� Laurendeau said.

A spokesman for Quebec Treasury Board president Monique Jerome-Forget, whose department is in charge of negotiating civil-servant’s salaries, said that the law was a necessity to protect taxpayers from another round of extracurricular-activities boycotts such as the ones in 1999 and 2005 and unions who couldn’t come to an agreement with the government.

“The children were the big losers, and we wanted that to stop,� said Jerome-Forget spokesman Isabelle Taschereau.

“We had 1,500 meetings with the union in the course of negotiating the last contract. We took the lead on the issue, because it’s clear that the pressure tactics last time around were not helping advance the contract at all. We ended up at a point where we had to impose the contract because there was too big a difference between (what the government was offering) and (what the teachers wanted),� she added. “They wanted $7 billion, and we were only able to offer $3.4 billion.�

Laurendeau said the 8,000 English teachers in Quebec make less than any other teachers in Canada — at both the entry level and the high end of the pay scale.

First-year teachers make $36,920, the worst figure in the country and a couple of thousand dollars less than Ontario teachers, who have the next-worst starting salary. At the high end, the most teachers can make after 17 years of experience is $64,798. The next-lowest high-end salary is New Brunswick, which pays its most-experienced teachers a little over $68,000.

“It’s clear Quebec doesn’t value what we do. When you compare us with other provinces, it becomes even more clear. We are the lowest-paid teachers in the

country,� he said.