How did we get here? Quebec public sector unions take page from past to fight today's labour battle

One thousand. That's how many students Quebec psychologist Janet Strike-Schurman has in her care. 

Every week, Strike-Schurman puts in hundreds of kilometres on the road, travelling from school to school, from Châteauguay all the way down to where rural Quebec meets the American border. 

When she started the job over 20 years ago, she used to spend her time figuring out ways to help children struggling with learning disabilities like dyslexia. These days, it's one crisis after another, a surge of children dealing with trauma and suicidal thoughts. 

"We just don't have the resources to deal with these cases," she said. 

For the past decade, full-time psychologist job openings have gone unstaffed because few people are lining up to replace Strike-Schurman's colleagues who have burned out or gone to work in Ontario for double the pay, she said. 

"If I didn't do my job, these kids would get nothing … The children and families don't have the resources or even the ability to go for private support and sometimes the CLSC will have waitlists of, like, years," said Strike-Schurman.

"It feels belittling that the premier puts the work of saving children as a low priority," she said. 

Fed up, Strike-Schurman is picketing on Monday under the banner of the common front — a collection of four different union federations representing some 420,000 public sector workers — in what is expected to be the largest mobilization since the common front was founded a half century ago, to demand better wages and working conditions.

Armando Rafael will also be joining the picket lines. As an orderly at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital, he has fed, changed and cleaned up after countless sick and vulnerable patients. 

"You're the gofer of all the medical staff," said Rafael.

In some parts of the hospital, patients are ringing the bell, waiting more than an hour because there aren't enough orderlies on staff — a situation that will only deteriorate if the government doesn't raise wages, he said.

Squeezed by the rising cost of living and low pay, he says the few orderlies on staff are tired of working on their days off for the overtime pay to make ends meet.

Turn back the clock to 1966. It's a time of upheaval in Quebec society — the Quiet Revolution.

During the province's first major public sector strike, workers win big at the bargaining table. They walk away with provincewide pay scales, rights to vacation time and greater job security, said Jean-Claude Bernatchez, a professor of labour relations at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières.