It’s Wednesday that makes it or breaks it for the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE). Four of its unions approved the agreement in principle reached with the government so far, and four rejected it. All that remains is the vote of the Haute-Yamaska Education Union, which will break the tie on Wednesday evening and which will determine whether a return to the negotiating table will be necessary for this center.
What there is to know
- On December 28, the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE) recommended the adoption of the agreement in principle reached with the government.
- Four local FAE unions followed the slogan and voted for the agreement. Four others rejected it, dissatisfied with the gains considered too meager in terms of working conditions.
- It will be Wednesday’s vote by the Haute-Yamaska Education Union, in the Granby region, which will be decisive for the FAE.
The FAE, at the national level, recommended acceptance of the agreement in principle. The executive of the Haute-Yamaska Education Union recommends its rejection.
As there is currently equality across Quebec for the FAE, this shows the pressure that rests on the shoulders of the executive of the FAE of Haute-Yamaska and its members.
Mélanie Hubert, president of the FAE, said Monday that she would not grant any interviews until the vote is completed. The local FAE executive did not call back The Press.
Whether the vote goes one way or the other, no union will go on strike again,” assures Marie-Josée Nantel, communications advisor at the FAE. If the agreement in principle is rejected by five local FAE unions against four, “negotiations will resume and any mobilization action must first be decided at a general assembly”.
The big question is also how long the meeting in Granby will last on Wednesday, while votes that were held early in the night in other FAE assemblies continue to be the subject of strong criticism.
A petition
The Haute-Yamaska Education Union has 2,000 members. It is therefore quite small, very far, for example, from the Alliance of Montreal Professors (also affiliated with the FAE), which has more than 11,000.
As reported by the daily The right On Monday, a teacher from Gatineau, Cynthia Lagarde, even launched a petition asking the Syndicat de l’enseignement de l’Outaouais (SEO) to resume the vote in favor of the agreement in principle, which was held last week. She demands that the process be done “with fixed voting times and a predetermined duration in order to allow members to vote in greater numbers”.
By the end of Monday, 234 people had signed this petition, without it being possible to know whether in all cases they were members of the union or different members.
Diane Gagné, full professor of industrial relations at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières, says she hopes at the FAE, on a national level, that the teachers of Haute-Yamaska vote in favor of the agreement in principle. She says she hopes so because “it’s hard for the executive [national]hard for the members” and also to prevent “66,000 members of the FAE from bearing the odium” of a rejection.
The salaries offered to teachers are attractive, she notes, and this is according to her the reason why the results at the FAE are so tight. Because as M indicatesme Having won, the union members are far from being thrilled by the gains obtained in terms of working conditions, which they considered from the start to be the crux of the matter. What appears clear to him is that regardless of the outcome of Wednesday’s vote, it is so close that the working conditions of teachers must, in his opinion, “be the subject of a societal debate, as it should be being “.
A “claimant” union
His prediction for Wednesday’s vote? She says she has no idea what the outcome will be. On the one hand, the FAE – the major central body – recommended the adoption of the agreement in principle. “Obviously not out of joy, but because she had the impression of no longer being able to obtain more” from the government.
The Haute-Yamaska union, underlines Mme Gagné, however, is “one of the founding executives of the FAE” and he knows how to be “claimant”, she notes, adding that it is impossible to predict the way in which the voting members will react when it rests on them such pressure.
As for the complexity of the vote, Mme Gagné recalls that the FAE was born in 2006 from a schism that occurred within the Centrale des syndicats du Québec. Nine education unions then chose to stand apart.
Since then, the FAE has always been committed to ensuring that every member’s vote counts equally, whether a teacher in a small or large union. Hence the complicated mechanics established by the FAE for the adoption or not of the agreement, which includes, among other things, a system similar to that of the electors in the United States.
Certainly, she said, once all this is over, the FAE will have to think about its ways of doing things.