Discussions are underway on Monday between Quebec and the FTQ, to try to iron out the obstacles that have arisen and which mean that the union organization does not want to sign the texts of the collective agreements in health as submitted.
It is the two large unions affiliated with the FTQ which have members in health, namely the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Syndicat québécois des employes de service (SQEES), which detected distortions between what had been agreed at the negotiation tables, according to them, and the texts submitted by Quebec before signing the collective agreements.
Last Friday, the FTQ announced that it would not sign the texts of the conventions as submitted by the Quebec government.
The SQEES and the CUPE confirmed on Monday that discussions were continuing with the management negotiating committee to try to resolve this disagreement. CUPE reported that the discussions were taking place in a “constructive mode” and that it hoped to reach an agreement “by the end of the week”.
The FTQ was part of the common inter-union front with the CSN, the CSQ and the APTS. For the moment, it seems that the pitfalls detected by the FTQ only affect the health sector.
As for the CSN, its two health federations, the FSSS and the FP, have finalized their texts. It was reported Monday that there were no longer any obstacles to signing.
At the APTS, where there were still some snags on Friday, the situation has since been resolved. “Over the past few hours, your negotiating team has managed to resolve the issues that remained in the texts proposed by the employer side,” the Alliance said in a message to its members on Saturday.