A long, hot summer

Up the street is a building that houses the workshops and garage of the facilities and repair people for one of the school boards. Right now happy people from the CSN are picketing outside it. For years and years there has been a kind of truce between employers, the government and unions ( la paix sociale in French), basically the everyone tried to bargin in good faith, some union – employer conflicts led to a strike, but nothing all that massive.

As everyone from mainstream pundits to anarchists have pointed out, the social peace is over. Off the top of my head I can think of a bunch of major unions that are in a legal (and justified) strike position. CEGEP and Secondary school teachers, facilities people at a bunch of places, a bunch of University unions and on and on, many of these people have been without a contract for periods of years.

Add to this mix the just finished student strike, last years protests by parents and daycare workers and you can see where Premier Charest may well wish he had a Crawford to run to.