Quebec wants to limit the duration of strikes and lockouts

A showdown is brewing between Quebec and the unions: Labour Minister Jean Boulet just tabled a bill to limit the duration of strikes and lockouts. The health and public service sectors are excluded from the legislation.

With this bill, Quebec wants to prevent services to the population from being “disproportionately affected.” Three criteria will be taken into account: “social, economic or environmental security.”  

To achieve this, the government can first determine by decree that a union and an employer have 15 days to determine the services that must be maintained. After this period, it is the Administrative Labor Tribunal (TAT) that will decide. 

Secondly, the bill gives the Minister of Labour the power “if he considers that a strike or lockout is causing or threatening to cause serious or irreparable harm to the population” to appoint an arbitrator who can end it and determine the working conditions of employees. The public and parapublic sectors are not subject to this power.  

Even before the bill was tabled, unions took to the barricades. 

“Beyond Minister Boulet’s good intentions, we have to call a spade a spade: by wanting to modify the Labour Code in this way, the minister wants to use the government apparatus as a screen in order to have the possibility of doing essentially the same thing as his federal counterpart: intervening in labour disputes,” indicated CSN President Caroline Senneville.

“It is precisely due to a lack of economic, social and environmental security that workers must resort to strikes. The fact that the Minister of Labour is assuming the power to limit it by decree will benefit neither those who keep public services running, nor the population that needs them,” said Robert Comeau, president of the Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews