Last April, healthcare professionals who are members of the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ) sent a strong message to the government to indicate that the current negotiations in the healthcare network were not over. They spoke with a strong and determined voice, convinced that our healthcare network deserves better and that the population needs better care conditions.
Healthcare professionals are ignored by the government and by the new head of Santé Québec, Ms.me Geneviève Biron, who refused to speak with our representatives from Quebec during her tour in which she aims to learn about the state of the network. We have come to a clear conclusion: the leaders still refuse to listen to the women who make up the vast majority of the health network.
Our negotiations are at an impasse, not because it is difficult to negotiate with the FIQ, but because we are faced with an inflexible government that persists in demanding more and more from our healthcare professionals: overtime, whether mandatory or not; contingency plans; overload; shortened or postponed vacations; and now, mobility.
The government is asking healthcare professionals to accept more and more, to the detriment of the safety of care for the population, but also to the detriment of their own health. The demand for mobility in its current form is the last straw!
Sonia LeBel, Minister and President of the Treasury Board, mentioned that healthcare professionals had “not understood” what was being proposed to them. An insult and direct infantilization of our members, who on the contrary had understood very well and who were trying, through their refusal, to sound the alarm on the dangers of mobility and excessive service mergers. A bell that the FIQ takes very seriously, but that the government still refuses to hear.
Reprisals
During our eight-day strike in the fall of 2023, the CAQ government sent directives to employers in the network to suspend many of the rights of healthcare professionals. The imposition of these reprisals was a hard blow, since our members remember very well the excessive sanctions and fines suffered during the strikes of 1989 and 1999.
The government’s intention to curb the enthusiasm of healthcare professionals while they were exercising a fundamental right that is already excessively restricted by the Act ensuring the maintenance of essential services was clear.
Recently, the Administrative Labour Tribunal (TAT) ruled in favor of the FIQ, ruling that the suspension of seniority accumulation imposed by the CISSS de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue during the fall strikes constituted illegal reprisals. We are actively working to ensure that this judgment is upheld and extended to all of Quebec so that our members can regain the seniority they lost, following government directives, while they were exercising a fundamental right.
The government is doing everything it can to cover up these delinquent and anti-union practices by contesting the TAT’s judgment. The damage has been done. These measures contribute to gagging our members, to intimidating women who are mobilizing to ensure good conditions of care for Quebec.
In April, the cry from the heart of our members should have had an impact on our negotiations; the government should have finally heard what we had been explaining to it for months. The debacles of the latest reforms should have convinced Mr.me Biron on the importance of listening to healthcare professionals, who are best placed to present the network’s challenges.
Wishful thinking? Perhaps, but when more than 80,000 fellow citizens and employees have things to say, it is reasonable to listen to them. Perhaps Mme Will Biron learn from past mistakes by accepting our requests for a meeting, but today, we have to acknowledge that the government is not reasonable and has no business listening to the solutions that healthcare professionals have to propose for the network. That it has no intention of taking steps toward us and that we will have to, once again, fight to ensure the quality and safety of healthcare in Quebec.
Today, we are preparing a strong return to school in terms of pressure tactics. Healthcare professionals will make themselves heard, the government and the new leaders of Santé Québec must understand that they can no longer ignore us.