On Sunday, March 20, 99 per cent of Molson Coors’s 420 plant workers (located in Montreal’s South Shore) voted against the latest offer from the bosses, triggering an indefinite strike four days later. The disagreement was related to the bosses’ 2.25 per cent wage increase proposal and their attempt to implement a new layoff system that would no longer take into account employees’ seniority.
According to Éric Picotte, president of Teamsters Local Union 1999, working conditions deteriorated after the company first merged with the American Coors company in 2005, and later with the Miller brewing company.
Last year, the employer locked out its Toronto workers for opposing an offer that included attacks on pensions and schedules. We are talking about seven-day work weeks and 12-hour workdays, with no overtime pay. Comrades from Socialist Fightback in Toronto launched a solidarity campaign with the workers at the time.
As for the current strike, it’s crucial to understand why the situation has escalated so much:
The 2.25 per cent wage increase does not even account for half of inflation, which currently stands at 5.7 per cent. This means that this offer would leave the workers with a wage cut.
The new layoff system is also inflammatory. Molson wants to be able to ignore seniority when laying off employees whereas normally, if layoffs are to occur, the last ones hired are the first to be let go. With this new system, Molson Coors could get rid of higher-paid workers first (because the oldest are usually higher on the pay scale) when laying off employees. It also opens the door to using layoffs as a tool to retaliate against workers who are too combative by going beyond seniority.
A Molson Coors representative maintained that the strike will not affect the production of our “favourite” beers.
How is this possible, though? It turns out the company is resorting to using scabs, who have already been spotted by workers. Molson Coors last used scabs during the Toronto lockout, knowing full well that this is illegal. But they will use any means necessary to break the strike and limit its impact on their profits.
There are only so many ways to deal with scabs. It won’t be enough to file complaints with the Tribunal administratif du travail (Quebec’s administrative labour tribunal). The tradition of hard picketing must return in force. It is Molson who is breaking the law, not the workers. If the scabs can’t physically get through, then the strike will work!
For these pickets to be effective, workers need numbers on their side. The leadership of the Teamsters and the FTQ (Quebec’s largest labour federation) should call for the pickets to be reinforced by other union members. With a movement that mobilizes more than the 420 workers at the plant, there is a much better chance that the employer will back down!
Working conditions are getting worse every year and the bosses are using all sorts of pretexts to line their pockets, all while workers are getting poorer. This is especially true since the pandemic and the subsequent explosive rise in inflation. They expect us, the working class, to sit back and do nothing. This applies not only to Molson workers, but to the rest of our class. The workers’ fight is our fight.
Molson employees are among those who are putting their foot down and fighting back. They need the active solidarity of the whole labour movement!
