Some 1,200 delegates from the various unions of the FTQ will meet in convention, starting Monday – a convention at the end of which the president, Daniel Boyer, will retire.
The president of the largest trade union center in Quebec will leave after three terms as president and one as general secretary.
In interview with The Canadian PressDaniel Boyer confided to leave “in peace” and to consider “a real retirement”, to ride a bike and play golf – which does not mean that he rejects in advance any offer that could be presented to him.
“I also do not give up on certain proposals that could be made to me. I’m told I’m on all kinds of lists. I do not know. If I am offered interesting things, which coincide with values that I have defended all my life, I do not say no. »
But that will have to be less time-consuming than running a central labor body of 600,000 members, in addition to acting as first vice-chairman of the board of directors and member of the executive committee of the Fonds de solidarité FTQ, sitting on the executive committee of the Canadian Labor Congress, in addition to the General Council of the International Trade Union Confederation. And that’s not counting all the joint employer-union organizations in Quebec on which he also sits.
Balance sheet
From these years spent as president of the Quebec Federation of Labour, Daniel Boyer retains “the great confidence of workers in the FTQ”. And “it’s reciprocal”, he hastens to add.
Under his reign, several important battles took place, such as the protection of pension plans in the event of business bankruptcy, the minimum wage and the revision of the occupational health and safety plan, among others.
He also says he is proud to have been able to maintain a “fairly good solidarity” between the major unions of the FTQ: Steelworkers, Unifor, Teamsters, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Quebec Union of Service Employees (SQEES), United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and others. “It is even growing between the affiliates”, as is the mutual assistance between the private and public unions of the FTQ, he argues.
And an inter-union common front could this time be reconstituted for the next public sector negotiation.
No longer govern alone
If he has a message to deliver to the Legault government, it is to accept social dialogue and to stop making the unions responsible for what is wrong, in health and education for example.
“I hope that it is not a dictatorship, that this government does not manage Quebec from the height of its 90 deputies, by deciding, the CAQ alone, for all Quebecers, for the next four years. Because it won’t befun. »
For more than two years of the pandemic, there has been decree after decree, in particular to impose working conditions on employees, putting aside the unions, according to him.
“The government, as a legislator, has allowed itself what it does not allow any other employer. There is no other employer who can unilaterally modify working conditions in a unionized environment where there is an employment contract,” Mr. Boyer said.