WORLD WORLDWIDE CANADA News Journal Update - (en) Canada, Collectif Emma Goldman - Strike by public service union members: With audacity, the government can bend (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 We are sharing with you this text which has reached us by email. Do not

hesitate to do the same and send us your news and opinion letters. ----
Common Front demonstration, education sector, in Saint-Félicien,
November 23, 2023 ---- Much ink is currently being spilled about the
negotiations of the Inter-union Common Front, the FIQ and the FAE with
the government. According to the state-employer, the union members are
not flexible enough and these negotiations would be an opportunity to
make them learn new contortions, while taking care not to specify the
supposed benefits expected in terms of the services offered. We have
been talking for years about staff running out of steam, professional
desertion and shortages... and yet the government has been humming to
the population that all these beautiful people could do a little more.
It is wrong to think that services have not suffered from all the
"flexibility" measures imposed on public service workers in recent
decades. Services have in fact suffered so much that people are now
referred to the private sector to obtain better services, as long as
they can afford it.

Caring about others, taking care of your neighbor, cultivating mutual
aid, generosity and empathy are at the heart of the daily lives of many
women and men who give their time, their strength and their health to
work in public services. These values are not contradictory with the
idea of going on strike, demonstrating and blocking the machine to be
more considered by the government. We are facing a government that is
devoted to the richest. While his finance minister spoke to us of
austere times to come, he rained down billions for the arrival of a
foreign company whose situation was according to analysts precarious. We
have also seen billions rain down for other companies like Bombardier.
And we should not be surprised to see billions raining down again for
other multinationals, because the government is in the pay of the big
capitalists. The rich are getting richer and richer while the workers
and the poorest are getting more and more. The government camp is clear
and clear. He is on the side of the wolf in the sheepfold, on the side
of the exploiters who support a world of competition, enslavement and
destruction. In their ideas of mutual aid and solidarity, workers hold,
on their side, the seeds of a new world, a world where the well-being
and freedom of all really count, a world transformed by the realization
and sharing of the full potential of each person.

The media is currently trying to make union members calculate the cost
of each day of strike in a very conservative manner. Union
representatives gave this same speech during the assemblies of the last
teachers' strike. It is forgetting that there are many concessions to be
sought from the government and that they must be won through struggle.
We have the strike and the means of disruption to make ourselves heard.
As workers, we told ourselves that we were carrying public services at
arm's length and now we are carrying them at arm's length through the
strike. If we fold, it will still be the services that will suffer with
even more exhausted staff and underfunding. Let's remember this: the
government negotiates by responding to the interests of the private sector.

There are nearly 17,000 of us who are part of the Common Front in
Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, not counting the 3,300 FIQ union members in the
region. A historic mass strike movement is underway in the province with
more than 500,000 union members preparing for indefinite general
strikes. These workers who were called essential not long ago could
block the system and if they get angry, there will not be enough police
officers, judges or prisons to stop all this. world. Since the
capitalist order is inequality, suffering and oppression, let's not be
afraid of making disorder to bring a little common sense back into
society. To win the negotiations, it will take more convincing than the
simple accounting calculation of lost salary days. Through the audacity
that will allow us to wrest new concessions from the patron state, we
will also be able to find the path towards a more united and freer society.

A libertarian union member from the Common Front in Pekuakami

by Collective Emma Goldman

http://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.com/2023/11/greve-des-syndique-e-s-des-services.html
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