After just eight days of strike and eight days without pay, the women working in our schools represented by the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE) have already reported in the media about their financial problems. Requests for food aid came in and a Facebook group was created to facilitate donations.
Published at 1:10 am. Updated at 5:00 am.
A special education professional who visited food banks before the labor dispute told my colleague Caroline Touzin about her bottom line work1. She began baking her own bread and participating in community kitchens. Your teenagers are hungry. By the way, you too.
Two days later, at Tout le monde en parole, we learned that the teachers also lacked money for food. Although their salary is significantly higher than that of the assistants.
“Since the strike began, around a hundred teachers have signed up for our services,” revealed Jean-Sébastien Patrice, general director of MultiCaf, a community organization that helps low-income people eat better.
Two teachers had foreseen from the outset the financial problems that would arise from the incomprehensible and irresponsible lack of a strike fund. They created a Facebook group to anonymously connect Good Samaritans with teachers whose budgets are no longer balanced.
About 90% of the requests the Mutual Aid for Striking Teachers site receives are about food, one of the founders, Marjorie Guilbault, told me. Others want gas, clothes. The group has 12,000 members.
In a sign of the times, the United Steelworkers donated $100,000 to support the strikers… in the form of food gift cards.
I can't remember any other strike in which the problems of nutrition were addressed so quickly and so comprehensively in the public space. YOU?
Teacher Geneviève Savard's testimony, which can be read on the Radio-Canada website, is particularly disturbing and reveals a much broader problem than the non-existence of a strike fund2.
“I have a really good career. I went to university. It's a job I love, except I can't do it. And the smallest thing like this that takes a cut in my salary, I call it “crossing the desert.” » She is one of those who asked for help in the “Mutual Aid for Striking Teachers” group.
If you spend four years at university, then get hired by the government and are lucky enough to have a stable job with a golden pension, you can't imagine one day having to ask for donations to eat… between two paychecks.
That's exactly the problem, even for strikers with decent salaries: the time between the two paychecks has increased.
However, in Quebec, 38% of workers live paycheck to paycheck, according to a Léger study conducted in late August. Although this proportion is lower than nationally (47%), it is still worrying. Also striking in the statistics is the gap between men (42%) and women (51%) who are waiting for their Thursday paycheck to pay the bills (Canadian data).
This essentially female strike is clear evidence of financial insecurity and lack of room for maneuver in the event of the slightest mishap.
Of course, requests for help and testimonies of insecurity show how important that famous cushion of three to six months of fixed costs (housing, food, car loan, electricity, telecommunications) that financial advisors suggest is. Most importantly, these cries from the heart highlight how difficult it is for many people, especially women, to follow this advice.
First, because their salaries are around 12% lower than men's, according to Statistics Canada3.
Imagine, as many as 46% of working women in Quebec have an annual income of less than $30,000, making saving nearly impossible.
In many cases, debt becomes a way of life. This group includes many school employees: daycare technicians, social workers and special education teachers as well as secretarial staff. According to her union, her average income is $26,484.
It must be admitted that women do not negotiate their working conditions as vigorously as men, as Patrick Lagacé wrote so well in a recent column4.
Not only do women have lower incomes, in 77% of single-parent families they are also the ones who financially support the children. They then have an average income of $1,091 per week, while solo men can expect to earn $1,514.
And what about the maintenance obligation in all this? In order for an amount to be agreed upon, you still need an ex who agrees to mediation. You still must have the means to hire an attorney to appear before a judge. The ex's income declaration must still correspond to reality. The amount still needs to be checked regularly. Nevertheless, it is important that not every discussion about money poisons the family atmosphere. It is still necessary that…
You will understand that unfortunately it is anything but easy and automatic. Furthermore, it is high time to improve the system so that all parents contribute financially to the needs of their offspring according to their abilities. At the moment, women in particular are suffering from its shortcomings.