Hundreds of thousands of public and parapublic workers went on strike in the province on Monday. Roughly 420,000 workers are represented by the Common Front, a coalition made up of the CSN, CSQ, FTQ, and APTS unions.

For over a year, they've been negotiating with the provincial government for better working conditions, stronger pensions and benefits, and salary gains that surpass inflation.

"Maybe ten, twelve years ago, working in the public sector was something good," says CSQ president Eric Gingras. "But nowadays, people choose to go elsewhere."

The chronic pressures facing sectors like healthcare and education were laid to bare during the pandemic, but he says the unions were sounding the alarm long before COVID-19.

"We saw it coming, but nobody was listening."

According to the Common Front, the province's latest offer would see public sector salaries lag behind inflation by 7.8 per cent in 2027. Gingras says the government is "negotiating like it was three decades ago," but now the public is on the workers' side.

"It's not only a union battle. It's a population battle too."

Caroline Letarte Simoneau represents the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l'Île-de-Montréal for the APTS. On Monday, she was braving the cold beside her colleagues outside Hôpital Notre-Dame in the East Plateau.

She says that low salaries and tough conditions are pushing workers out of hospitals like this one. More workers are hired, but it's not enough to make up for the people who leave.

"What we see a lot is people come into the health sector and they quit, because they get better conditions in the private sector."

Letarte Simoneau says in some parts of the sector, vacancies are so high that people are brought in from outside the system to fill in the gaps. The difference in salaries is a source of "frustration" for the union workers who do stay, she says.

This comes as the proposed Bill 15 is poised to reorganize the health sector's governance in Quebec. The possibility of greater privatization contained in the bill is also a worry for Letarte Simoneau.

"Further along, what [will become of] our public services? Are they still going to be free? Or is it going to be only the wealthy who can get better services?"

Treasury Board President Sonia LeBel took to X, formerly Twitter, to comment on Monday's strike. She affirmed that public sector workers need to be fairly paid, but reiterated the government's line, that negotiations "cannot be one way."

But that's not enough to stop the Common Front, which has announced a three-day strike from Nov. 21-23.

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