If there’s one place in North America where austerity has been met with mass mobilization, it’s Quebec. In 2012, mass student strikes involved a quarter million students at their peak, and wrenched tuition hikes off the government’s agenda.

Now, three years later, public-sector unions across the province have begun a wave of strikes against proposed cutbacks.

In the first round of rotating regional strikes from October 26–29, one section of the more than four hundred thousand unionists organized in the Common Front shut down schools, hospitals, and government offices in and around Montreal.