They want pay parity with Crown prosecutors.
Quebec legal aid lawyers began a first day of strike Thursday in several regions of Quebec, disrupting many services offered to the population.
Picket lines are set up in front of courthouses in the province, including those in Montreal and Rimouski.
In addition, all services offered by the legal aid centers of Montreal, Laval, Montérégie, Laurentides, Lanaudière, Bas-Saint-Laurent and Gaspésie will be interrupted until April 14, let their unions know, which are affiliated with the CSN.
These legal aid lawyers are demanding pay parity with Crown prosecutors, who like them are employees of the Quebec state. They have been without a collective agreement for three years.
They had been paid the same salary for years, but the current offers from the Treasury Board do not make it possible to maintain this pay parity, explained Me Hugo Caissy, president of the union for the regions of Bas-St-Laurent, Gaspésie and Magdalen Islands.
Our request is reasonable, he adds, noting that legal aid “is the pillar of access to justice”, especially for vulnerable people. About 300 of the province’s 400 legal aid lawyers are on strike, he calculates.
“We plead the same cases, before the same judges, in the same courtrooms as the prosecution. And we are told that we are not worth as much as Crown prosecutors, ”continued Me Mélanie Desjardins, member of the executive of this same union, from the Rimouski courthouse where the lawyers are picketing.
Over the next few days, certain services will be interrupted throughout Quebec during this labor dispute, in particular telephone on-call and video-appearance services during the Easter holiday. This will also be the fate of certain ministerial programs, such as the Rebuild program, the legal advice line for victims of domestic violence, as well as the priority processing of the resulting files.
Thursday morning, at the Montreal courthouse, the absence of legal aid lawyers was already felt.
In room 3.07, an inmate who did not have a lawyer was initially unable to obtain one to appear before the judge of the Court of Quebec.
“There is no one from legal aid today. You will have to come back later,” the magistrate told him.
Despite this, a legal aid lawyer showed up in this courtroom to settle two delicate cases for people struggling with mental health problems.