Public-sector unions have an unfortunate habit; they tend to remember the well-being of service users only when budget cuts are announced or when labor contracts are being negotiated. At those moments, they call on public solidarity, reminding people that the quality of services depends on the quality of working conditions. That is not false, not at all.
It is true that better services are achieved by paying employees properly and reducing their workload, notably by hiring more staff. Last fall, the Quebec Ombudsman noted a decline in staff empathy toward patients and their loved ones in the health and social services system, the result of a long series of cuts and regressive reforms. In the public service, the Syndicat de la fonction publique du Québec (SFPQ) has pointed out that “austerity is measured in suffering”. They were noting, for example, that 92% of calls to the Administrative Housing Tribunal go unanswered due to a lack of personnel.
But public services are not neutral, regardless of their condition. Although they are all the result of popular struggles, they remain responses designed by the ruling class; as such, they play a specific role in the reproduction of society. From the employers’ perspective, the health-care system treats the workforce so it can return to work; the social services system deals with the most dispossessed in order, when necessary, to reintegrate them, or their children, into the labor market. The same applies to the education system, which trains the future workforce, from early childhood through university, including general education and vocational schools.
Public services also all have a coercive dimension that shapes or eliminates elements deemed undesirable by employers, whether by putting migrant or racialized people “back in their place” in the labor market or, at times, by outright eliminating populations. Think of the forced sterilization of Indigenous women, a practice that is still recent, or the mistreatment of First Nations patients that can lead to death. These are extreme examples, but consider all the rules built into access to public services that contribute to disciplining you.
Finally, access to public services always puts beneficiaries and those around them to work. Think of caregivers who must accompany a patient on a daily basis to ensure they receive all necessary treatments and care, or parents who are responsible for making sure their children arrive at school clean, fed, clothed, rested, healthy, and on time, on top of homework and discipline. Students themselves are not passive beneficiaries to be filled like empty jugs. They must work hard to acquire the skills expected by employers in order to progress through the education system. All these skills are counted in hours of work, credits, and have value on the labor market.
A true common front
It is therefore insufficient to call for reinvestment in social services if the goal is to build a genuine common front against austerity. The division between, on the one hand, service workers and, on the other, service users poses a first problem. It is as a class that we must respond to attacks on social services, and to do so, unionized public-sector workers must stop seeing users as beneficiaries and start seeing them as colleagues.
Real solidarity requires adopting a coherent perspective and demands. Public-sector unions must therefore support demands such as student wages for both internships and studies; compensation for caregivers who sometimes devote themselves full-time to the well-being of the sick; and a basic income championed by groups of social assistance recipients and precarious or migrant workers, who understand that the normal functioning of the capitalist economy implies the marginalization of large numbers of people from the labor market or their confinement to the very bottom of the social and wage hierarchy.
It is around a shared demand that goes beyond reinvestment in public services that we can lay the foundations for a common front strong enough to overturn austerity attacks. It is true that cuts and regressive reforms often create opportunities for mass mobilizations that can force governments to retreat, regardless of the party in power. However, we must recognize that each time, the concessions made by the ruling class are only partial. This is a serious problem with a defensive strategy: each time, a little more is lost.
That is why it is high time to go on the offensive by patiently organizing a true common front in which users of public services are considered colleagues of service workers.