The president of the Quebec Federation of Labor (FTQ), Daniel Boyer, announced Monday that he will not seek a new mandate next November.
Posted at 3:03 p.m.
Mr. Boyer, who has held this position since 2013, announced Monday noon, during a meeting of the FTQ’s Board of Directors, that he would not be a candidate for re-election at the convention of the central, next November in Montreal. .
Mr. Boyer was first elected as Secretary General of the FTQ in 2010, a position he held until his election as President of the Federation in 2013, succeeding Michel Arsenault.
Daniel Boyer was a beneficiary attendant in a CHSLD in Verdun, “to pay for his education studies”, when he began to be active in the labor movement in 1978, indicates a press release from the FTQ, which represents more than 600,000 workers and workers in Quebec.
He then rose through the ranks of union action, becoming in turn vice-president then president of his local unit, then union councilor and president of the Quebec Union of Service Employees (SQEES-298), before being elected to the senior management of the FTQ.
On April 3, Mr. Boyer announced, with the leaders of the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN) and the Central Trade Unions of Quebec (CSQ), the formation of a “common front” of the three largest trade union centrals in Quebec, in view of the negotiations of the 2023 public sector collective agreements.
“Throughout his career, Daniel Boyer has never stopped fighting to demand better working conditions and better wages, as well as to lift the poorest people out of poverty, using all the platforms that were offered to him, indicates the FTQ. In each of his speeches, Daniel Boyer has constantly campaigned for better social dialogue with governments. »
Mr. Boyer will have had an eventful spring. On April 28, we learned that a woman had been, 10 years ago, the victim of sexual harassment and assault on the part of Rénald Grondin, then director of the Interprovincial maneuvers association, of the FTQ, this which did not prevent him from becoming president of the important FTQ-Construction. Mr. Grondin resigned the very day of the publication of these revelations in La Presse.
Daniel Boyer then wrote in a press release that Mr. Grondin’s resignation “should not end the conversation” on sexual harassment in the workplace. “We have to wonder about the impunity that allowed this man to reach the presidency of one of the largest unions in Quebec,” he wrote.
Then, on May 3, the FTQ-Construction announced that it had adopted an “action plan to adopt measures against psychological and sexual harassment as soon as possible”. A measure that did not convince the Minister of Labor of Quebec. Jean Boulet then directly asked the president of the FTQ, Daniel Boyer, to “shed light” on the Grondin affair.
The next day, the FTQ and the FTQ-Construction announced the holding of an independent investigation in order to “get to the bottom of things” in this file.