By many metrics, Québec’s labour unions are the envy of North America. Numerically, the province has the highest unionization rate on the continent, at around 40 percent of the workforce, including over 80 percent of public sector workers. It has played a key role in building one of the most expansive and protective welfare states on the continent, thanks in part to its close ties to community organizations and social movements. Quebec labour has flexed its muscles in recent years with an uptick in strike levels not seen in several decades, most notably the “Common Front” public sector strikes of late 2023, which involved nearly half a million workers and forced an intransigent CAQ government to back down.
At the same time, as with unions around the world, Québec labour faces many challenges. Internally, Québec’s system of “labour pluralism,” with multiple unions and labour confederations claiming the same jurisdictions, sometimes results in “raiding,” where unions fight each other over groups of already-unionized workers. Externally, the CAQ government has attacked public sector workers with budget cutbacks and layoffs, while enacting a series of laws aimed at limiting workers’ right to strike and to engage in social and political mobilization. Meanwhile, private sector employers have taken a more aggressive anti-union stance, emboldened by retail giant Amazon’s move last year to shutter its Québec operations rather than negotiate with a group of unionized workers at its Laval warehouse.
Sensing a need to assess the state of their movement collectively and chart a course ahead, leaders of all nine major Quebec labour organizations launched last year a major consultative initiative known as the États généraux du syndicalisme (EGS, Estates-General of Québec Labour). This is the first time a process of this scale has been undertaken.
The name is freighted with historical meaning, evoking the representative assemblies under the Ancien régime in eighteenth-century France that culminated in the French Revolution. But in modern times across La Francophonie, but especially in Québec and other French-speaking parts of Canada, the term has been used to describe other large-scale processes of social consultation to address important social issues, such as the state of postsecondary education, the status of the French language in Ontario, the Québec legal system, and more.
Launched in March 2025, the EGS involved a series of consultations involving thousands of union members across the province around seven themes: Québec labour’s role in society, building union power, the current labour relations model, unions’ political role, unions’ representative role and members’ sense of belonging, inter-union relations, and the relation between unions and historically marginalized groups. Out of these consultations came a reflection document, which was circulated among the participating labour organizations.
That year-long process culminated in a two-day symposium, held March 31 and April 1 in Drummondville, where delegates discussed the findings of the consultation process. The proceedings started with an opening plenary session featuring community figures close to the labour movement.
I had the honour of being invited to address the delegates, alongside Françoise David (feminist leader and co-founder of Québec solidaire), Vincent Chevarie (representing Au bas de l’échelle, a community group representing non-unionized workers), Manon Poirier (Director of the Order of Human Resources Professionals), and Pascale St-Onge (former federal cabinet minister and former president of the Fédération nationale des communications et de la culture, a CSN affiliate). The moderator was journalist Françoise Guénette.
Our mandate as panelists was to comment frankly on the findings from the consultations over the past year, and to offer some provocative insights. I can say that we did our best to be provocative (Françoise David even dared to broach the topic of inter-union raiding), and that we did not shy away from discussing the multiple challenges currently facing Québec labour.
The plenary set the tone for the remainder of the symposium, which consisted of workshops where delegates from all different unions, sectors, and industries broke into smaller groups to focus on one of the seven designated themes.
Having stayed for the rest of the symposium and attended the workshops, what impressed me most was the spirit of openness that characterized the discussions. Given the siege mentality that prevails in many parts of the labour movement (not without reason), it can sometimes be hard to dig into the many challenges that unions and workers face today in Québec. But delegates seemed to grasp the gravity of the moment, and took full advantage of the opportunity to share their visions for the future of their movement.
For me, as someone who has spent most of my adult life in and around the labour movement, both as a scholar and practitioner, I came away from the event deeply impressed with the EGS project. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a similar initiative being undertaken elsewhere in Canada or the United States. The challenges Québec labour remain enormous, but a process like this is essential for figuring out a way forward. It was a privilege for me to be able to put my research expertise to work in order to enrich the conversation.
Barry Eidlin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at McGill University. He is a comparative historical sociologist with an interest in the study of class, politics, and institutional change. His research focuses on explaining the diverging trajectories of working class power in the United States and Canada over the course of the twentieth century.