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VIDEO, September 7, 2009 - The 200 or so Steelworkers working at the Prysmian cable plant in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu in Quebec have been on strike for more than six months. Claiming the economic crisis, the Employer is demanding major concessions from the workers, and is threatening to close the plant by the end of October if its demands are not met. Here is a report on the blackmail tactics being used by the Employer, as broadcast on Radio-Canada. 

Watch Video on Radio-Canada

Strikers chanting

Solidarity, Solidarity

Striker
Exercising the right to strike is the final means we have to make sure that we are heard. But when a company’s employees choose to strike while in the midst of an economic crisis, it shows that they are really at their wits’ end.

Bertrand Hall
In Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, the Steelworkers working at the Prysmian plant have been on strike since April 1 of this year, the conflict having much more to do with poor working relations than wage issues. Although they are aware that striking during a recession is a delicate matter, the workers are nevertheless determined to follow through.

Striker
Let me tell you something. The company has shown that it has no time for respect. You don’t choose when to be respected or not. For the past six or seven years, they have failed to show respect for the collective agreement and for the workers. There comes a time … We don’t have a choice. There is no good time to strike, and there is no bad time either.

Bertrand Hall
Yet the negotiations that began last September seemed to be going fairly well. There were only a handful of provisions left to be settled. But on August 24, the company decided to play hardball.

Striker
Everything was swept off the negotiation table. They said that all the issues we had previously agreed upon no longer stood. So now we have to renegotiate the collective agreement in its entirety, and we only have eight weeks.

Bertrand Hall
A letter sent to the employees establishes this coming October 24 as the final date for an agreement to be reached. If an agreement cannot be reached, the plant will be closed, the blame being placed on the economic crisis. The Steelworkers are claiming that this is nothing short of blackmail.

Striker
On Day 1 of the negotiations, at the beginning of September 2008, the Employer thanked us for the previous collective agreement. And now … The plant was profitable.

Michel Grant, Associate Professor, Organization and Human Resources Department, UQAM
- So you need to have a combination of employers who truly have their backs up against the wall and really need to seek concessions, but others who say OK, we’re going to take advantage of this because, given the context we are in, the Union will be more likely to believe us than in another context.

Bertrand Hall
For this labour relations expert, there is no doubt that recessions favour employers in the event of a labour conflict.

Michel Grant
The working conditions the employees had been working under had been obtained at a time when things were going well for the company. Now that things are not going as well, the company is seeking to recover some of the rights or gains it had conceded to the Union in the previous collective agreement.

Bertrand Hall
Strikes during an economic crisis are therefore much less frequent, and lock-outs are much more tempting. Since the recession began, the CSN has seen 13 labour conflicts, the FTQ has seen 4, and the CSD barely 3. In St-Jean, of course, Prysmian refused to meet with us.

Bertrand Hall, Radio Canada, St-Jean-sur-Richelieu