Although the strike only lasted a few hours, many classes were half empty Monday In the afternoon, as not all parents can leave work in the middle of the day to drive their children to school.
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“I find it a little boring,” said Jennifer Fleurent, 34, a mother from Saint-Charles-Borromée whose two teenagers spent the day at home.
Her two children attend two different high schools in Joliette. Classes generally took place in the afternoon because the school strike ended late in the morning.
In fact, around 420,000 workers represented by the Inter-Union Common Front went on strike between midnight and 10:30 a.m. on Monday.
However, Ms Fleurent and her partner both work outside the home and have to leave the house in the morning. It is impossible for them to give up work to drive their young people to school.
“I have nothing against the strike, I support it [les grévistes] at 120%. But we are being punished.” This would not have been the case if all students had also had time off.
On social media, many parents say they have decided their children will miss the entire day due to a lack of transportation.
More than 700 people responded to a spontaneous survey in a Facebook group involving parents from the School Service Center (CSS) of Samares in Lanaudière.
By the end of the afternoon, more than 50% said they had left their children at home.
Additional puzzle
At the CSS de la Riveraine in Centre-du-Québec, the absenteeism rate was 41%. In fact, 2232 out of 5461 students were absent this afternoon.
At the CSS des Affluents in Lanaudière, the rate was 40% at the secondary level and 18% at the primary level.
In some places, the yellow bus’s passage should be delayed by three hours. However, in fact, 25% of trips to CSS des Samares schools were canceled.
In fact, today’s strike has only exacerbated the ongoing disruptions in school transport service.
“There has been no school bus for three weeks,” said Kim Charron Pellerin, 44, a mother from Saint-Lin-Laurentides.
Because she had a doctor’s appointment, she couldn’t drive her three teenagers to high school like she did every morning due to a lack of buses.
“Never a driver”
“There is never a driver,” says Jennifer Fleurent, whose children have to walk a kilometer in the morning to catch a second bus to Joliette, as the first one has hardly passed since the beginning of the year.
In Saguenay, an indefinite general strike was already underway among members of the school transport union in the CSS de La Jonquière and Rives-du-Saguenay.
Since October 31st, Mélanie Plourde and her partner have been traveling back and forth with a neighboring couple.
But today there was no other choice: the children stayed at home. “I work at 10:40. […] My boyfriend works too and it’s too far to walk.”
– With Vincent Desbiens from the Journal de Québec
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