(The following article is from the April 16-30,  2010 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)

The following resolution in solidarity with the Journal de Montréal newspaper workers, who have been locked out for over 15 months, was adopted by the Central Committee, Communist Party of Canada, on March 28.

     Since January 24, 2009, 253 clerical and editorial workers of the Journal de Montréal have undergone a lockout imposed by their employer, Pierre-Karl Péladeau, boss of the Québécor empire and owner of Le Journal de Montréal.

     The objective of Péladeau is to make his staff accept major setbacks in their working conditions, including elimination of hundreds of positions in the advertising department, mostly held by women, to replace sub-contractors, and to allow all of his media companies to supply content for Le Journal de Montréal, going against the rules of journalistic ethics that ensure the quality of information. Since the conflict began, Péladeau has made demands for some 233 rollbacks in collective agreement provisions, and refuses any genuine negotiations.

     Péladeau has invoked the "crisis of the media industry" to justify his actions, but this is only an excuse. In reality, the Journal de Montréal made profits of $50 million in 2008, on sales of $200 million. Péladeau holds a record of lockouts in his business empire, always with the aim of strangling unions in endless conflicts.

     As with disputes at Videotron in 2002, which lasted almost a year, and at the Journal de Québec that lasted 16 months, Péladeau prepared his coup in anticipation of a long conflict. During the months preceding the lockout, he doubled the number of managers, expanded the newsroom of the free daily 24 heures, and created a new news agency to circumvent Québec's anti-scab law. In addition, he has tried to impose exclusivity agreements on freelance journalists, by which they abandon their copyrights to Québécor, which supplies their writings to the Journal de Montréal.

     Through these manoeuvres, the Journal de Montréal is produced daily without his professional workforce, as if there was no conflict. Québécor is playing with the rules and laws of Québec with the deepest contempt, yet the company has received wide support from the state, public funds, and the Caisse de depot (Québec pension plan) to become the monopoly it is today in the fields of information and communications. Québécor has indeed been guilty of using strikebreakers during the Journal de Québec conflict, but this ruling occurred only when the conflict had ended.

     In order to resist this aggression and to offer an alternative to the public, the union has produced a newspaper on the web, Rue Frontenac. For its part, the union federation to which the union is affiliated, the CSN, launched on Feb. 26 a major campaign to support the 253 locked-out workers. To pressure elected officials at all levels, the CSN is inviting the public to sign a petition asking the government to "put in motion all means available to promote, as soon as possible, a settlement negotiated and satisfactory to the parties (appointing a special mediator, legislative action to rebalance the power relationship, etc.)."

     The Communist Party of Canada fully supports the struggle of the Journal de Montréal workers, and urges the government of Québec to strengthen and enforce the spirit of the anti-scab provisions in the Labour Code of Québec.