(Quebec) Professionals from the Ministry of Health and Social Services are asking Quebec to delay their transfer to Santé Québec. The union that represents them wants to prevent its members from having to decide their future in the middle of the holiday period.
The Union of Professionals of the Government of Quebec (SPGQ) is asking the Legault government to postpone until the fall the wave of transfer of employees from the Ministry to the new agency, which should take place in September.
A first meeting between the head of Santé Québec, Geneviève Biron, the Deputy Minister of Health, Daniel Paré, and the Ministry’s union members will also take place this Tuesday. The objective would be to take stock of transfers as the summer approaches. We would also take advantage of this meeting to present Mme Biron to the union members, which has not yet been done.
For the moment, the union, which represents some 1,000 professionals, still does not know which employees will be affected by a transfer to Santé Québec. An affected official will be notified by registered mail 60 days prior to the transfer date. He will then have 30 days to accept or refuse.
However, to be ready for the start of the school year, the union anticipates that employees will learn the news during their summer vacation.
The counter runs from the moment the employee is notified by registered mail, explains the president of the SPGQ, Guillaume Bouvrette. “The issue that we saw, and we saw it [venir] from the beginning, it has been to notify people in the middle of summer […]. It becomes unsafe, in the middle of vacation, to receive mail of this nature,” he laments.
Two waves of staff transfers
So far, the Ministry is planning two waves of staff travel: the first in June, mainly for executives, and the second in September, for all union members. The maximum date for identifying employees transferred to Santé Québec is 1er October, according to a presentation dated February.
At least 700 positions could be transferred, according to Quebec. The SPGQ expects this to affect half of its members. The Quebec Public and Parapublic Service Union (SFPQ) will be affected to a lesser extent, while 136 employees out of 254 could be transferred. The Alliance of State Executives estimates that a first wave of 24 managers will be moved in June.
Administrative units of the Ministry will be completely integrated into Santé Québec, others partially. In the case of a complete transfer, all employees will be required to migrate. A civil servant who refuses the trip would then be “put on availability” elsewhere in the public service. In cases of partial transfer of a unit, volunteers will first be called upon.
An employee moving from the public service to Santé Québec will retain a unique right of return (one time), valid for life.
“What we hear is that certain people have been met, they have an idea of [ce qui s’en vient]but, for our part, we have still not been sent a list of positions that will be transferred and that does not allow us to effectively represent these people,” argues Mr. Bouvrette.
Still questions about salary conditions
Furthermore, the SPGQ deplores that there is “still nothing settled” regarding the salary conditions of future employees of Santé Québec. It must be understood that the civil servants who transfer to the agency will become employees of the health and social services network (RSSS). According to the union, salaries are 7 to 14% lower in the RSSS than those of civil service professionals.
The Ministry ensures that people transferred to Santé Québec will be integrated according to the “equal or immediately higher salary” rule in the job title scale.
However, due to higher salaries, many will then find themselves “out of rate, out of scale”, and that is where the problem lies, according to the union.
In this case, they would then receive “half of the salary increases provided for in the collective agreement of the health network and the other half in lump sums until their salary complies with their new agreement”, which would have “significant negative repercussions on their salary progression and the calculation [de leurs] retirement pensions,” writes the SPGQ.
The uncertainty would have pushed workers to leave the Ministry, according to them. Since 1er January, 24 people resigned and 51 asked to be moved elsewhere in the civil service, according to data provided by the professionals’ union.
The SPGQ and the government reached an agreement in principle on Friday for the renewal of collective agreements.
According to a survey carried out by the SPGQ in February, less than 8% of employees of the Ministry of Health and Social Services want to be transferred to Santé Québec, under current conditions. However, 63% of employees would be ready to migrate to the agency if they kept their collective agreement.