Public anger was monopolized by Rhodesian Michael Rousseau this week. But allow me to recall a scandalous situation that was eclipsed on Wednesday, the day the CEO of the airline Air Speak White spoke.
It is Marie-Eve Morasse who released the news which symbolizes the excesses of job security concrete for life, jealously defended by the unions, Wednesday morning. The title: “A harasser concierge could crack down for 10 years”.
Read Marie-Eve Morasse’s article
The guy worked for the Marguerite-Bourgeoys school board. Unwanted comments and touches on the buttocks and waist, the type to massage women without being asked. The type to give a teacher a memory of a vacation with a sexual connotation by telling her that he had thought about her a lot this summer …
In short, a pig monuncle.
The guy got disciplinary notices. Repeat. He was given two “last chances” under a memorandum signed with his union, CUPE Local 1208.
As in the days of pedophile priests, he was sent to another school when the situation became untenable in the school where he was assigned. And he started to crack down again, the same way.
He was even sent to therapy, in which the School Board participated, “by explaining the situation to his therapist,” my colleague Morasse recounted in her surrealist paper.
The janitor has always continued to touch the women, to make them uncomfortable, to accumulate complaints.
Ten years. Ten years ago. About twenty women harassed, affected.
The Marguerite-Bourgeoys school board had time to become the Marguerite-Bourgeoys school service center before the mononcle pig was finally and officially dismissed, last September.
I draw your attention to a passage from the article, capital: “The Marguerite-Bourgeoys school service center says it acted ‘promptly’ and specifies that” collective agreements provide for a prescription of disciplinary measures given to an employee after a period of time. 12 months ”. ”
Allow me to translate this into French: the employee who receives a disciplinary notice (say) on January 15, well, this disciplinary notice disappears on January 15 of the following year.
Let’s say that on January 15, the disciplinary notice disappears. Let’s say that on January 16, the employee repulses the buttocks of another teacher. You follow ? Well, when the employer will sanction the employee, he will sanction an employee who is deemed never to have caught the butt of a colleague: his file has been blank in the matter since January 15 …
She’s not a joke. This is the “prescription”.
The employer will therefore not be able to bring back to the table the first clipping episode when it comes to determining the penalty for the second clipping episode.
I discovered this invisibility cloak a few years ago, when I investigated a teacher at a school in Montreal who had terrorized children for fifteen years. The use of the verb “terrorize” is not taken lightly, believe me. When I contacted a mother whose now adult daughter had once attended school, she shouted, “My God, what a horror! When I told her I was calling her about Teacher X.
Read the column “If school were important (5)” published in 2015
Well, this teacher who psychologically harassed elementary school students, who belittled and humiliated them, yelled at them and ordered them homework that she did not correct has been valiantly defended for years by the Alliance des profs de Montréal.
Each disciplinary notice was “prescribed”, in fact: after a few months, the notice disappeared, and when another parent complained, well, the administration faced a teacher whose file was… blank.
Yeah, it’s crazy, I know.
Finally, because Press was investigating, because the newspaper was going to publish this surrealist story, boom, the Montreal School Board and the Alliance des profs agreed to a deal. They moved the crazy teacher, they sent her to another school.
I know, I know… The unions will tell me that the Labor Code obliges them to defend everyone. Of course, of course.
But… Has anyone heard the Quebec unions say that this obligation forces them to defend rotten people? Not me.
Is there a union leader who has raised his hand publicly in recent years to say that the current laws and regulations – which, for example, allow a harassing janitor to escape being fired for ten years – should be reviewed?
It’s like unions preparing grievances to challenge the “intolerable” desire of employers to protect workplaces by forcing workers to be vaccinated: I haven’t heard a cr **** say that these grievances were filed reluctantly.
Not one.
So, I don’t mind the legal framework. But the union world seems to be getting along quite well, all in all.
I note in closing that CUPE Local 1208, which represents the blue-collar workers of the Marguerite-Bourgeoys school service center, could have commented publicly, he could have said that he was UNFULLY obliged to defend this clumsy janitor …
Local 1208 could have said that maybe we should rethink the laws and regulations that keep rotten people running around for years like this janitor.
But no. Not a word. Radio silence.
I quote the article of Marie-Eve Morasse: “The Union of blue collar workers of the CSSMB, which represents the janitor, did not recall Press, while the West-Montreal Teaching Union refused to grant us an interview. ”
Isn’t that amazing?
That the blue collar union is embarrassed to speak is one thing. Maybe I too would hide in place of its president, Claude Bélanger.
But that the union which represents the 20 teachers who suffered the abuses of the dark janitor also in the omerta show how much union solidarity is strong: above all, we should not condemn a union comrade who has been defended by other comrades!
Now imagine how much these two unions would be stepped up in the curtain, if the stalker were a boss. It would take three fire engines to pull them off the curtains.
But when it’s a comrade, the stalker? Ah, there, it is not the same: all the unions are shutting their mouths, in an exemplary effort of solidarity.