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 in order to proceed with the signing of the collective agreements.
Last Friday, the FTQ announced that it would not sign the texts of the agreements as submitted by the Quebec government, arguing that the wording did not correspond to what had been agreed at the tables.
These distortions affected, for example, double overtime pay and the start of the payment of new bonuses.
The office of the President of the Treasury Board, Sonia LeBel, responded on Friday: “We will resolve the situation raised by the FTQ at the negotiating table” — hence these discussions on Monday.
The SQEES and the CUPE confirmed on Monday that discussions were underway 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”.
And the others in health?
The FTQ was part of the inter-union common front with the CSN, the CSQ and the APTS, which together represented 420,000 members. 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. The CSN 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.
“A final compliance check of all articles remains to be carried out, then your next collective agreement will be signed in the coming days,” the APTS indicated to its members.
The situation is different at the Health Federation, affiliated with the CSQ, which has 5,000 members — making it the union organization with the largest number of nurses after the FIQ. Neither has settled.
“We have no sectoral agreement at all. We haven’t even concluded, let alone signed any texts,” said Isabelle Dumaine, president of the FSQ.
However, discussions with Quebec have not broken off and “we still want to conclude before summer,” she says.