Workers from across the province came to Montreal for the protest. Hospital and health care workers, and teachers, support staff and students rallied together to denounce Charest’s bullying, which is done to defend and bolster the profits of Québec’s exploiting and oppressing classes, and, ultimately, those reaped by Bay Street [Canada’s Wall Street — Ed.] as well.

It has been five years since Charest and the Liberal-dominated provincial parliament imposed the current contracts on public service workers in Québec. These rotten deals included a no-strike clause that expires April 1. With the lagging economy and growing unemployment in Québec, the capitalists and their “middle class” managers are counting on Charest not bowing to the unions’ “pressure tactics” and being willing to impose another rotten contract.

And it certainly appears as if the Charest government is willing to oblige them. Speaking the day before the Mar. 20 rally, provincial Treasury Board President Monique Gagnon-Tremblay said she is prepared to let negotiations continue a few days after the expiration of the current contracts on March 31, but will not allow the talks “to go on endlessly.” This is a clear threat to workers in Québec: Either you accept this concession contract or we’ll make you accept it.

If Charest can impose this contract, there’s little doubt that the exploiting and oppressing classes will then look to their Liberal agent to go further by expanding private health care, raising university tuitions, electricity rates, and daycare and other fees, and slashing other state services.

The success or failure of Charest, however, rests entirely in the hands of the working class.

Workers in Québec have a long history of militancy and willingness to fight for their rights and livelihoods. However, in recent decades, our brothers and sisters have allowed bankrupt labor union officials to decide what’s best for them — that is, the capitalists and their managers have actually made the decisions, and the union officials have brutally enforced them.

Since the early 1980s, when René Lévesque, the Parti Québécois premier who was elected with broad support from the unions, imposed massive concessions on public workers, the officials of the business unions have laid down and accepted each proposed concession contract.

Successive premiers, both Liberal and Québécois, have followed in Lévesque’s footsteps, and have had similar results. Today, both the Liberals and PQ are united against the public workers, calling their demand for wage increases that keep up with inflation “excessive.”

For their part, the union officials are already preparing for another surrender. The head of the Confederation of National Trade Unions has already said strikes or similar workplace action will not occur before September, which means that the contracts will already be in place for months before any moves are actually made.

Charest has already shown he is willing to play hardball against public workers. In our view, it is time that our brothers and sisters respond in kind. The first step, however, is settling accounts with the labor union officials. Since they are not willing to defend workers’ interests, it is time to either choose new leaders or to organize new unions under membership control.

These unions could then elect strike committees and a new negotiating team that can make it clear that working people will no longer pay for the mismanagement and mistakes made by the ruling classes or their political parties.

This means organizing a political struggle and challenging the state — this means uniting to build the Workers Party in Canada/Québec as a new political party of the working class.