August 5 will mark the eighth month of lockout for the fifty workers at Béton Provincial (BP) in LaSalle and Longueuil. The lockout was triggered by the employer after the workers unanimously rejected a management offer they deemed unacceptable. Concrete industry workers across the province are watching this fight closely, as the contract that these workers obtain will likely serve as a precedent.
During negotiations, the LaSalle and Longueuil workers are asking for an 18% wage increase over four years. For its part, the employer is offering nothing less than a complete wage freeze until 2027, followed by a 2% annual increase in 2028 and 2029, as well as the abolition of pension and group insurance plans.
It should be noted that the consumer price index in Quebec has risen by 15.5% over the past four years.
According to workers at the LaSalle plant interviewed by North Star, the hardline stance of controversial CEO André Bélanger can be explained by the fact that the company is seeking to set an example by “cutting off the head” of one of the industry's “strongest” unions:
“He wants to break us to set an example for others,” says Gilles Marleau, union president and concrete mixer operator for 16 years. “It's to scare others in the industry. All the other companies have agreements similar to ours, and they've used them to negotiate.”
While the employer claims that its offer to reduce wages is due to the LaSalle plant's lack of profitability, the workers say the opposite is true. Among BP's 150 concrete plants, this one is the closest to downtown Montreal, an area that André Bélanger's company is trying to break into by offering concrete at lower prices, a move facilitated by the wage freeze.
Despite the employers' intransigence, the workers have no plans to give up. Since the lockout began, they have been staging a series of visibility actions to put pressure on the company, raise awareness of their struggle, and build inter-union solidarity.
“We went to the Jacques Cartier Bridge, we went to the head office in Quebec City, we went to support other unions, to raise awareness,” says Marleau. “But every time we take action, there is a reaction, he does something to us.”
According to Daniel, who also works at the Lasalle plant: “When we went to protest at the job fair, he took all our firewood and threw it in the trash. He also threw away a wooden bench that a colleague had made.”
Now, the union president says that every week, he is informed of a new legal notice filed by the employer in response to protests or comments on the Internet.
Of all the actions taken by the workers since the lockout began, it was the demonstration at Bélanger's vacation home in Magog that caused the most stir. On a pontoon boat on Lake Memphremagog, in front of the opulent $11.55 million property, the workers unfurled a banner denouncing the employer's offer.
According to the website Reflet du Lac, the vacation home has “eight bedrooms, seven bathrooms, five washrooms, a pool house with an in-ground spa, a tennis court, a detached double garage, […] five wood-burning fireplaces, a library, a gym, a sauna, and 227,000 square feet of private grounds.” As if that weren't enough, the master bedroom has an elevator specifically designed to access a 350-square-foot walk-in closet, about the size of a studio apartment in Montreal.
The property, which alone cost nearly 200 times the gross annual salary of a BP worker, according to calculations by North Star, is now in the hands of André Bélanger, current CEO of BP and son of the founder, and his wife, who heads the company's human resources department.
“It's the CEO's wife who's at the negotiating table! She's the head of human resources,” says Marleau. “Human resources is supposed to be the arbiter between the workers and the boss,” Daniel says ironically.
On the other side, the union movement isn't just sitting around. Several unions have contributed to the lockout strike fund to help workers keep going in what's becoming one of the biggest labor disputes of the year in the province.
Although the employer is seeking to make an example of the workers in LaSalle and Longueuil, the situation is turning into an opportunity for the workers to turn the tide and, this time, make an example of Béton Provincial.