POLI 211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Civil Society, Pulitzer Prize For Public Service, Centralisation
17 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS (03.16)
Civil society in QC: Labour movement, interest groups and social movements
- We’ve been looking at a variety of vehicles of political representation in QC
o Political parties
o Citizens in terms of their voting/policy preferences (esp. regarding QC sovereignty)
o Today: other vehicles of representation mostly rooted in civil society
▪ Political groups that have some influence on QC politics and that represent specific
group opinions and interests
▪ They have some importance in QC politics
Labour unions
- A very important social mov’t in QC
- About 40% of workers are unionized makes you realize the political weight that labour unions
represent
- Comparison of percentage of unionized workers graph
o Trends are stable: numbers don’t change much from a year to another
o QC: around 40%
o US: around 14%
o ROC: around 30%
- Putting QC in a comparative perspective makes you realize QC is different
- Being unionized means the workers’ interests are politically represented via the unions
- It also means the labour unions represents a distinctively greater mass of people
- Labour unions: significant political actor in QC
- 4 major union groups
o Fédération des Travailleurs du QC (FTQ)
▪ President : Daniel Boyer
▪ Created in 1957
▪ Represents 43% of all unionized workers (mostly construction area)
▪ 40% of members are public-service workers
o Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN)
▪ President : Jacques Letourneau
▪ Represent 21% of unionized workers
▪ Its membership is even more made up of public sector workers (especially workers
working in the health sector)
▪ Has some ties w/ the CTCC
o Centrale des Syndicats du QC (CSQ)
▪ President: Louise Chabot
▪ Represents mostly workers in the educational system
▪ Most of its memberships are educators (so come from public sector)
o Centrale des Syndicats Démocratiques (CSD)
▪ President : Luc Vachon
▪ More marginal than the others
▪ Born in 1972 out of a conflict w/i the CSN
▪ Goal: a workers’ union free from political ties
▪ Represent a smaller portion of workers: represent 73,500 unionized workers
▪ Mostly side w/ the others
▪ It’s not tied to a specific sector
o Other exist, which are smaller
o First three are the biggest + most politically active
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