By HERVE FUYET

Quebec

_ On November 15, the votes of work-
Ing people for an end to the anti-
Working class policy of the Liberal
80vernment, against unemployment,
Inflation and for national self-
determination were decisive in the Parti
uébécois victory.
_ The election of the Parti Québécois
in tun has created a new situation in
Québec for the labor movement. The
Party in power does not directly repre-
Sent monopoly capital but is rather
Petty bourgeois nationalist. One of the

Sic questions is for organized labor

and other progressive forces suchas the
Ommunist Party and to some extent
€ left-wing elements of the PQ to
€xercise pressure on the government to
force it to implement its electoral prom-
and to adopt an anti-monopoly pol-
It is the only way out of the general
_ sis of capitalism that affects Québec.
According to Statistics Canada,
€bec official seasonally adjusted
Unemployment rate in July was 10.3%
L€. 295,000 unemployed. Inflation is
high and lay-offs are numerous. Under
€se conditions strikes are generally
long and hard in all sectors of the
€conomy, with management using
Scabs and goons, supported by court
Mjunctions against effective picketing,
and by the local police or the riot squad.

Strikers are being threatened, beaten
Up, or even shot at and wounded as
happened recently at the Robin Hood
Flour Mill in Montreal. But in spite of
the economic situation and the climate
Of repression, strikes are often con-
ducted successfully.

Uniroyal (tire-recycling) has been
Closed for more than two years. Jean
“ournier, president of the union at Un-
royal, tells me that the workers are
United and solid and that a successful
Settlement is near. Centre Educatif et
Culturel (textbook publisher)
€mployees are preparing a militant an-
Niversary for the first year of their
Strike. Muessens (heavy machinery),

Olcano (heating equipment,
80vernment-owned), Radio Mutuel
Tadio) and many others are on strike
Cither for recognition of their union, a

t collective agreement, and or better
_ Wages and working conditions.

In spite of the economic crisis and the
Tepression, militancy pays off. Stan-
Chem workers (chemicals) and Iron and
4itanium workers after a long struggle
Primarily for their health and security
Won most of their demands.
‘*telicopter-imported scabs and
Management goons with dogs could not
gach the determination of the work-

Last February, the teachers of the
University of Québec in Montreal, after
almost six months strike, one of the
longest of its kind in North America

Succeeded in keeping their threatened .

quired rights and won most of their
€mands. One cannot list all the
cult strikes, nor their successful or
Partially successful settlement. One
Should mention however the struggle of
€ flour mill workers which is particu-
arly hard and important because it is
Part of the over-all battle against gov-
€mmental wage controls.
_ Québec participation, with the work-
from English Canada, in the March
demonstration in Ottawa, and in the

anada-wide day of protest on October

4 was high.

The PQ government has put an end to
Law 64, the Québec equivalent of fed-
fral Law C 73, governing employees of

© provincial government and as-
SOciated institutions. The tough strike

of the flour mill workers in Québec,
supported by the labor movement in
general, is a continuation of the struggle
against Bill C 73. They won a partial
victory when the federal government
agreed to treat as forced savings the
contested 40 cents an hour beyond the
federal guidelines won at the negotiat-
ing table.

Robin Hood Company, one of the
four struck flour mills, refused to give
in, fired all their workers on’strike, and
is responsible for.the shooting by goons
of eight workers, two of which were

seriously wounded. Ensuing popular .

indignation forced the PQ to give seri-
ous consideration to the fulfillment of
an anti-scab law electoral promise. The
labor movement almost completely
supports Bill 45, the proposed anti-scab
law, while the Conseil du Patronat
(bosses association) and the various
chambers of commerce in Québec pro-
test loudly.

The shooting at Robin Hood also in-
itiated a boycott campaign of Robin
Hood products, and a campaign to for-
bid management private armies, a cam-
paign in which the Communist Party of
Québec, and the Canadian Tribune par-

_ demand an end to wage controls.

ticipated with the trade union move-
ment. é

The PQ proposes to further revise
the labor code and transform it into the
basis of a ‘‘contract of social peace’.

Regrettably the 250,000 member
Québec Federation of Labor, the
largest trade-union centre and the one
with the highest percentage of indus-
trial workers, while opposed to tripar-
tism at the federal level now shows
signs of favoring it at the Québec level.

For instance nobody in the QFL
leadership denounced Jean Gérin-
Lajoie, president of the Québec section
of the United Steelworkers, when he in
effect renounced the official class
struggle position of the QFL as expres-
sed in its manifesto “‘The State is a cog
of our exploitation’, attacked the Con-
federation of National Trade Unions
(160,000 members) and the Centrale de

: [Enseignement du Québec (60,000

teachers) and the Communists, treating
them all as ultra leftists in his report to
the Québec steelworkers convention

last December. Gérin-Lajoie also de- -

‘scribed the PQ as a worker’s party, a
title energetically rejected by René
Lévesque himself, and recommended

Quebec abor joined workers from across English Canada in Ottawa, M

full support for the PQ. In addition he
opposed the formation of a mass feder-
ated party of the working people such
as advocated by the Parti Communiste
du Québec and seriously entertained by
the CNTU, the CEQ and unions in the
QFL itself.

While there are dangerous signs of
penetration of petty bourgeois
nationalism and reformism in the QFL,
the CNTU and the CEQ in the main
share the analysis of the PCQ that sees
the PQ as petty bourgeois nationalist
which has to be forced to side with the
working class.

Ultra leftist elements which make no
distinction between the political parties
of monopoly capital and the PQ create
problems in this respect. At the last
convention of the CNTU in May, the

executive in its report attacked the ar-
rogant and anti-democratic attitudes of
the Maoist groups and the Trotskyist
groups in the labor movement. The
executive of the CNTU deplored the
fact that objective factors delayed the
growth of a mass party of the working
class such as in France and in Italy. The
executive emphasized that the struggle
for anti-monopoly intermediate objec-
tives will isolate the ultra leftists groups

‘eer x
an

arch 22 to

~ “for whom even the short term objec-

tive is always Socialism’’.

Michael Bourdon, president of the
construction unions of the CNTU
stated that the position of the CNTU
executive was anti-ultra-leftist but not
anti-communist and that ‘‘the
Communist-led CGT in France has as
many problems as us with the ultra lef-
tists’. The struggle of the trade union
movement against petty bourgeois re-
formist nationalism and against petty
bourgeois ultra leftism will strengthen
the trend toward unity of action and
even organic unity of the labor move-
ment in Québec.

The economic summit of the PQ last
May when the unions met with the bos-
ses and the government clearly demon-
strated that Lévesque was not able to
deliver on his promise of social peace
made to big U.S. capitalists in New
York. Both the CNTU and the CEQ
demanded the fulfillment of electoral
promises and the democratic national-
ization of key sectors of the economy.
They refused to follow the dominant
right wing of the PQ that would like to
create at the expense of the working
people a purely French-Canadian

monopoly capitalism. After the sum-
mit, reactions of the -Montreal Labor
Council (QFL) and of CUPE (QFL) in
Québec indicated strong resistance to-
ward tripartism in Québec also in the
QFL:

There is a limit to what trade unions
can do and there still exists a glaring gap
in the political spectrum in Québec.
There is still no member of the National
Assembly speaking squarely for the
working class, no mass political forma-
tion of the working people that would
deal a hard blow to monopoly capital.
The next step for labor in Québec must
be the formation of a new mass political

party of the working people which

could take the form of a federation of
trade union and democratic organiza-
tions, including naturally the Com-
munist Party of Québec, which first
formulated the idea, and possibly left-
wingers of the PQ. Such a party would
tap the tremendous anti-monopoly sen-
timent in and out of organized labor and
move the labor movement out of its
present political dead end.

Key to the formation of such a new
party is a policy on the national ques-
tion that unites rather than divides
working people in Québec.

None of the three Québec labor fed-
erations has as yet taken a stand on the

’ national question. Documents are being
prepared that would help to take the
pulse of the membership and also to
propose courses of action. Certainly,
an unprecedented working class-led
struggle for the equality of French and
English Canada economically, socially,
politically and constitutionally as advo-
-cated by the Communist Party of
Canada would contribute to such unity
in Québec and in Canada in general and
would contribute to a successful anti-

- monopoly s

Democratic organizations sharing —

other views on the national question

could certainly also participate in the —

future mass federated party of the
working people..One should re-
member, though that if separatist views
predominate, it would necessarily lead

‘to tailing behind the French-Canadian
petty bourgeoisie and becoming an au-
xiliary of the Parti Québécois among
the workers.

As stated very recently by Marcel
Pepin, an influential labor leader, past
president of the CNTU: “‘... the sep-
aration of Québec would open even more
the Québec economy to U.S. economic
domination. The separation of Québec
should not take place because the work-
ers would suffer the economic consequ-
ences”’. :

This is also the message of a great
Québec labor leader, a leading member
of the Communist Party for years, our
beloved and sorely missed late com-
rade Jean Paré. On the occasion of
Labor Day it is appropriate to recall
that it was Jean Paré who drafted the
resolution unanimously adopted by the
last convention of the Canadian Labor
Congress in Quebec calling on the fed-
eral government to proclaim May Day,
the international day of solidarity of the
working class, a statutory holiday, thus
uniting the workers of English Canada
and those of Québec who for several
haga now Officially celebrate May

ay.

Hervé Fuyet is a professor of
political science at Dawson Col-
lege, Montreal and an executive
member of the Dawson’s teach-
er's union. He has been a teacher
for 15 years and active in the

_ trade union movement for the last
10. A member of the Communist
Party of Quebec, he is a delegate
to the Montreal central council of
the CNTU.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER Q, 1977—Page 5

labor marches forward