Let’s put together the scattered pieces of the puzzle of the legal challenge at the Supreme Court of the Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE) against Law 21 and the derogation clause.
Piece one: the challenge to the FAE will first be carried out using the money of its members. A historic dispute, because the costliest in its history.
Piece two: this legal participation will take place without the consent of its members. It is based on the will of a few leaders.
Piece three: this protest comes a few months after its general strike, where several teachers suffered from the absence of strike funds and from small democratic shenanigans when the time came to consult members on the agreement signed with the government.
Piece four: the FAE contests a law mainly supported by Quebecers after fifteen years of debate, democratically voted on by a twice-elected government and constitutionally validated.
Piece five: we are more specifically contesting the derogation clause, provided for in the law. A clause which, according to the latest news, does not really concern the working conditions of its members.
Piece six: this law has a “grandfather” clause to protect teachers already employed. Its limbs are hardly affected.
The puzzle put together, therefore: this is an undemocratic protest, financed by teachers’ money, but decided by a few people, of a law, democratically voted and legally validated, which concerns neither the exercise of their profession nor their active members. Find the meaning in this.
Useful idiots
Since this announcement, Mélanie Hubert, president of the FAE, has been discreet. Many teachers had criticized her. She broke her silence this week by affirming that the criticisms were “not constructive”, and that the protest represents “less than $20 per union member”.
Ah good.
If I were a member of the FAE, and my organization turned into a puppet for jurists and opponents of Quebec secularism, more interested in a constitutional clause than in teachers, I would ask myself serious questions about my union and my president .
