Engineers employed by the Government of Quebec turn to the Arbitration Tribunal to try to push the Treasury Board to settle the payroll problems they are experiencing more quickly.
These engineers, members of the Professional Association of Engineers of the Government of Quebec (APIGQ), previously worked a 35-hour workweek. At the end of the last negotiation of their collective agreement, they agreed to extend this work week to 37.5 hours, being paid accordingly.
However, the pay has still not been increased to reflect these 37.5 hours, although they started working for 37.5 hours, argues the APIGQ in its request.
The vast majority of employees have seen their work week increased to 37.5 hours from December 2022, underlines the union.
The APIGQ had already complained to the employer representatives who had attributed the whole thing to “a problem with the programming of the systems at the Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital”, relates the union in its request.
The union has already filed grievances since.
And now, he is asking the Arbitration Tribunal to issue an order to compel the Treasury Board to correct “recurrent errors without delay” in payroll.
“I can’t believe we have to go to court to get engineers paid for the hours they work. We hope that this legal procedure will be able to draw the attention of the government to the absurdity of the situation”, commented the president of the union, Marc-André Martin.
The President of the Treasury Board, Sonia LeBel, has already said she is aware of the problem and said she understands the “discomfort” that this causes to the workers affected. “We are very aware of it and we are working on it,” she had already said.
She added that the engineers would not lose any money and that if interest had to be paid, it would.