The services of the Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec (BAnQ) will be disrupted on Tuesday when its 350 employees will begin a five-day strike.
The Grande Bibliothèque will remain open, but subscription services, vinyl record borrowing or the Service québécois du livre adapted will not be available, specifies the BAnQ on its website. The buildings and sites of the National Archives and the National Library will also be closed. However, it will be possible to borrow and return books.
Without a collective agreement for three years, the Union of United Workers of the Library and National Archives of Quebec (STTuBAnQ-CSN) denounces a negotiation “which has been stretching for nothing for more than a year”. According to him, the discussions are slowed down by the changes of the representative of the Secretariat of the Treasury Board, which oblige the parties to start the exercise from scratch each time.
The union representative is asking in particular for an increase in the salaries of his employees, which he considers to be among the lowest in the sector. According to his estimates, a library clerk working at BAnQ earns about $33,000 a year, compared to $37,200 at the Université de Montréal or $49,300 at the City of Brossard.
The president of the STTuBAnQ-CSN, Sylviane Cossette, affirms that these employment conditions push many of its members to find work elsewhere.
“In the midst of labor shortages and inflation, BAnQ’s budgets are not indexed, which imposes a constant deficit on the institution that increases from year to year and which directly affects its operations. […] The Treasury Board must therefore quickly correct this problem, ”said Stéphanie Gratton, vice-president of the Federation of Public Service Employees (FEESP-CSN) in a press release at the beginning of the month.
The strike called by the STTuBAnQ-CSN will continue until February 18. The members of the union have given themselves a bank of 10 strike days, adopted by 94% at the general assembly on January 16th.
With Annabelle Caillou
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