Top union brass caught obstructing solidarity with Quebecois students
I'm surprised it took so long for Canada's union bureaucracy to really feel the democratizing pressure of the social media Wikileak internet age. It finally happened in a big way this week – Quebec and Canada's top union brass had "internal" correspondence, in which they direct all of Canada's major unions to put the brakes on solidarity with Quebec students (including the wide-spread social resistance to the UN-condemned Quebec law criminalizing protest), leaked and posted by an anonymous blogger.
Top union brass caught obstructing solidarity with Quebecois students
By Diane Kalen-Sukra
The Real News
I'm surprised it took so long for Canada's union bureaucracy to really feel the democratizing pressure of the social media Wikileak internet age. It finally happened in a big way this week – Quebec and Canada's top union brass had "internal" correspondence, in which they direct all of Canada's major unions to put the brakes on solidarity with Quebec students (including the wide-spread social resistance to the UN-condemned Quebec law criminalizing protest), leaked and posted by an anonymous blogger.
SO-SO-NOT SOLIDARITY
A quick summary of the leaked correspondence. On May 28 th, the leader of the Quebec central labour body (FTQ), Michel Arsenault, issued a letter to the leader of Canada's central labour body (CLC), Ken Georgetti in an effort to put a stop to efforts by "labour leaders in English Canada" who intend to "come and support the social conflict currently prevailing in Quebec".
It's useful to remember that this solidarity-killing letter was issued at the height of this longest and largest social protest in Canadian history, the precise moment when hundreds of thousands of Quebecois citizens were heading CLASSE's (the dominant student coalition) call to defy Law 78, imposed to break the popular movement by essentially criminalizing protest as it severely restricts the Charter-protected right to freedom of assembly. This was the time when many of the province's lawyers famously hit the streets in solidarity with the people, aware of Law 78's unconstitutionality and the danger it poses to our democracy.
Arsenault reasoned that the "situation in Quebec is currently very volatile" and expressed his continued intention to "ask for compliance" to this very same law the social movement in Quebec, and heart of the student strike (referred to by Arsenault as "radical wings") were defying. He writes that the "social strike" is not "THE strategy to be promoted for the moment," rather "the best approach is to facilitate a settlement instead of fuelling the fires".
In a peculiar final dump, Arsenault ends his letter blaming his rejection of English Canada's solidarity on the high tuition fees paid by students outside of Quebec. He writes, "if students in other provinces were paying less for their school tuitions, this would put less pressure on ours".
In bureaucratic-solidarity, the leader of the 3.3 million member weak workers' army in Canada, Ken Georgetti immediately forwards the letter to all union affiliates across the country with a cherry on top. In his cover letter, Georgetti addressed head-on the "rumours" that some "national affiliates plan to organize potential illegal actions in Quebec in violation of Bill 78, to support the student protests."
