(Quebec) The Central Trade Unions of Quebec (CSQ) asks the Legault government to impose a watchword on school service centers so that they withdraw pregnant teachers who are the subject of preventive withdrawal without they are required to do other tasks that require contact with students.
Posted at 2:23 p.m.
According to the central, nearly a third of the school service centers where it represents unions reassign pregnant teachers to other tasks that require them to meet several students at the same time, sometimes without a mask or at the bottom of a distance of two meters. She considers this situation unacceptable in the context of a wave of COVID-19 infections.
According to the vice-president of the CSQ, Line Camerlain, this occupational health issue arises in school service centers where the labor shortage is glaring. “But we can’t put the health of pregnant women and their future babies at risk because of the labor shortage,” she says.
A letter sent to Quebec
Last February, the central union sent a letter to Ministers Jean-François Roberge for Education, Jean Boulet for Labor and Christian Dubé for Health, in order to denounce this situation. In this missive, that The Press has obtained, the CSQ cites an opinion issued in December by the Institut de la santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) where it is written that “pregnant workers who have received two or three doses of vaccine or who have already had the disease before December 2021 have since been considered partially protected”.
The INSPQ then goes on to state that pregnant workers must in this context “minimize [leurs] contacts”, “promote teleworking” and “ensure a minimum physical distance of two meters”, which is impossible, judges the union, in a school context.
“You will understand that we have enormous difficulty reconciling the recommendations of the INSPQ and the reassignment of school workers and, particularly, primary school teachers to secondary positions, as seems to be currently spreading in the centers of school services,” laments the CSQ in its letter.
“How can we limit contact with different people at the same time and promote small stable teams when we place a pregnant woman in a class made up of 25 to 30 students, and even more, in secondary school? We stray even further from the INSPQ’s recommendation when the same person finds himself in another group of students in the following period and sometimes meets up to four or even five groups in a day. that is, possibly 150 students,” she adds.
A situation deemed “indecent”
The office of the Minister of Education, Jean-François Roberge, confirms having received the letter from the central labor body. Verifications are carried out with public health and the CNESST, responsible for occupational health and safety protocols, in order to validate what is specifically recommended in the case of pregnant women in schools. At press time, the firm was unable to provide a more detailed response to the union complaints.
For the CSQ, it is essential that all school service centers apply the health rules governing preventive withdrawals in the same way. The union believes that it is “indecent” to use “pregnant women to fill needs that cannot be met otherwise”, and that it is “impossible given the size of the [CNESST] to send an inspector for each disputed case » between a teacher and her employer.
“If the PMSD program was created, it is to protect all pregnant women and this protection remains essential, especially when the INSPQ considers that pregnant women are less protected than the general population when it comes to COVID-19,” says Line Camerlain.
” [La situation actuelle] violates the rights of these women and it is dangerous for their health and for that of their unborn child, ”she judges.