Le syndicalisme quebecois: deux siecle d'histoire (review)

This book is a revised version of the Histoire du syndicalisme québécois that appeared in 1989. The earlier edition was extensively illustrated, but this one is not. A conventional chronological survey of the labour movement, it focuses on organizational growth, the ideological positions of the union congresses, their relationship with governments, political action, collective bargaining, and strikes. Readers will find little on many of the themes that characterized labour history in recent years, including race and ethnicity, gender, or the role of labour in the struggle for human rights, but then the author makes no claim to offer anything in these areas.

The subtitle promises two centuries of history. In fact, the nineteenth century has been reduced from sixty-five pages in the first version to twenty pages in the second. The author's intention is to show that Quebec labour evolved much as its counterparts did elsewhere in North America. After Rouillard has set aside much of the interesting detail from the earlier version, what appears to emerge is that the most notable difference between Quebec and Ontario is a more hostile attitude towards the Knights of Labour and the international unions among some Catholic bishops.

This book is really concerned with the twentieth century. The second chapter covering the years 1900 to 1940 offers a discussion of the secular international unions, and of the national and Catholic unions – the last being a development unique in North America. Despite an ideology that opposed class struggle and promoted harmony between workers and employers, Rouillard argues that Catholic unions were just as militant as their secular rivals in defending their members' interests, a few early exceptions aside. The author's own account, however, reveals that Quebec bishops constrained some workers, as Montreal Archbishop Bruchési prevented public Catholic school teachers from organizing even a Catholic union. This is a period on which Rouillard has published extensively, and this reader would have welcomed more discussion of the influence of European social Catholicism on the Catholic unions, and on the resulting tensions between these European and North American influences.

The chapters on the years 1940 to 1985 have been reorganized, making them much clearer. There is a useful description of several developments: the secularization of the Confédération des travailleurs catholiques du Canada, which became the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) in 1960; the radicalization of the congresses as they developed an alternative vision of society that by 1970 ranged from social democratic at the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec to socialist at the CSN and the Centrale de l'enseignement du Québec; the confrontations of the common front strikes; and the growing support for sovereignty among union members.

What is entirely new is a lengthy chapter on the years 1985 to 2003. Despite the fragmentation of the Quebec labour movement in which there are four trade union centrales, several themes characterized this period. The nationalism of the movement remained strong, but support for socialism waned. The three largest congresses all supported the Yes side in the 1995 referendum. Battered by a series of recessions, free trade, the rise of precarious employment relations, and neo-liberal reforms that weakened labour's bargaining power and reduced its influence on government, the congresses abandoned their criticism of capitalism and sought more cooperation with employers. Rouillard also describes the difficult dealings with Parti Québécois governments, usually closer to labour than Quebec's other political parties. Sometimes these relations are reminiscent of those between organized labour and NDP governments elsewhere in Canada. For example, in 1996 the PQ enticed all the centrales into supporting the elimination of its deficit in exchange for a promise to maintain social programs, reduce poverty, and stimulate employment, only to turn around weeks later and insist that deficit reduction required the reopening of collective agreements and concessions from public and para-public sector workers.

In recent years, Rouillard has...