Montreal and Quebec: blue collar move against outsourcing

As Montreal blue-collar workers announce a series of rotating strikes to begin next Monday, Quebec City workers strongly denounce the decision of the Labeaume administration to entrust waste collection to the private sector, disregarding the collective agreement. At the center of these two conflicts, we find the privatization of municipal services in the background.

To Montreal, blue collar workers' rotating strike to last 40 days, and aim to protect workers from the increasing use of subcontracting for services such as snow removal and garbage collection. In Quebec, the union is not yet in action, but rather announces a media awareness campaign to convince residents of the correctness of his point of view.

It goes without saying that the two strategies are rather weak given the importance of the issue for municipal workers, and the strength of pressure from employers to get their hands – by cronyism and corruption – on the juicy snow removal and garbage collection contracts of the big cities of the province.

While the bosses generally claim that the use of subcontracting reduces the city's operating costs, it is in fact often the opposite that occurs. If workers' wages fall with outsourcing, which reduces costs, however, these savings need to be put into perspective because private companies perceive a profit on operations which just cancels – and often exceed – the savings made on the backs of workers. So, outsourcing appears rather as a means of passing income from the pocket of workers, who see their wages reduced, to the boss pocket, who come to pump a profit on municipal operations. Not surprising that employers defend the massive use of subcontracting !

But there is also another reason why outsourcing does not produce the savings expected, and this is corruption. If recent media revelations about cronyism, the corruption and systematic theft of public funds by employers in the construction industry we could surprise some, the fact remains that it is the capitalist system itself that encourages and promotes such criminal behavior. And opening snow removal operations to the private sector, in a context of widespread corruption, certainly won't help fix the problem.