Deploring poor working and salary conditions that are detrimental to the retention of manpower, the support employees of Urgences-santé will hold a 36-hour strike next week in the hope of speeding up negotiations for the renewal of their collective agreement.
The personnel who will be on strike include attendants and mechanics who take care of the maintenance of vehicles as well as medical equipment. This strike, which will mainly concern administrative tasks so as not to interfere with the emergency calls answered in Laval and Montreal by this ambulance service, will be called at midnight Monday and will continue until noon Tuesday.
“Our negotiations are complete, but we did not agree on the level of salary”, notes in an interview with the To have to the president of the union representing these employees, Marc Dulude. “We actively negotiated, but despite a lot of effort, we did not succeed,” sighs the union leader, who recalls that the collective agreement for Urgences-santé support staff has expired since March 31, 2020.
By means of this means of pressure, the Fédération de la santé et des services sociaux (FSSS-CSN) wishes to denounce the poor salary conditions of the support employees of Urgences-santé, which would harm the retention of the workforce within of this organization. Thus, of the 120 support employees of the public paramedical company, 45 have left the organization since last January, or 37.5%.
“We are no longer able to retain our people and hire new ones,” laments Mr. Dulude, whose union gave itself a 10-day strike last month. “Our staff are exhausted. »
In order to compensate for this lack of employees in the organization, Urgences-santé recently awarded a $156,000 contract to the private sector to hire six employees for ten weeks, mentions the FSS-CSN press release.
“We have a hard time explaining why the Treasury Board authorizes such significant spending on a private company, while refusing to put in place incentives that would allow us to upgrade jobs without resorting to subcontracting” , reacted by means of a press release the representative of the pre-hospital sector within the union federation, Jean Gagnon.
Other days of strike are to be expected “by September”, indicates Marc Dulude.
The Treasury Board had not commented at the time of this writing.