“It’s a real battle. » The Union of Professors of Laval University (SPUL) sent a formal notice on Wednesday to the establishment’s general secretary, Monique Richer. He accuses the institution of having acted “illegally” by not respecting certain criteria of the collective agreement obtained by its members in the context of the reform of the institution’s statutes.
“The red line has been crossed by the senior administration,” says the president of the SPUL, Marie-Hélène Parizeau, in an interview. The formal notice, signed by lawyer Sophie Cloutier, of the Poudrier Bradet law firm, indicates that the union is ready to take “all necessary recourse in the face of this situation, including an injunction before the Superior Court,” if the university does not pause the process of adopting its statutes while ensuring that they respect the SPUL collective agreement.
“It’s a real battle,” continues Mme Parizeau, who recalls that “when we get to this point, it’s because we really haven’t been heard.”
The union representative, however, said she was relieved to see that the university agreed on Thursday to extend this ongoing process, in reaction to criticism from professors. In order to make themselves heard, around a hundred of them presented themselves that day in front of the room where the members of the University Council were meeting who were holding a plenary session on the reform of the institution’s statutes.
“We had interesting, frank and direct exchanges and together we established a work plan for the future,” Laval University responded by email on Friday, specifying that “the process of revising the statutes will continue over the course of the next weeks “. However, the union has not ruled out going to court if its grievances do not receive an attentive ear from management. “We’ll see,” says Mme Parizeau.
Take part “democratically” in decisions
The general secretary set “the powder on fire” on March 22 by sending, around 5:30 p.m., an email to the entire university community in which she announced that she had taken “an important step in the overhaul of the statutes” of the university, which determine the management criteria of the establishment, explains the president of the SPUL. In this email, she affirmed that the changes planned to these statutes, resulting from a process begun in 2019, “are compatible with all collective agreements, regulations, agreements and protocols, including that of the Union of Professors of Laval University (SPUL)”.
However, this is false, retorts Marie-Hélène Parizeau, since only 3 of the 35 recommendations made in recent months by the SPUL so that the university’s statutes are compatible with the new collective agreement for teachers were retained by the general secretary of the establishment.
However, it is “written in black and white” in this collective agreement, obtained last year at the end of a teachers’ strike which lasted several weeks, that the statutes of the establishment must comply with this agreement, valid until 2027, she insists.
Concretely, the collective agreement for professors provides that they must be “at the heart of the governance of the university” by taking part “democratically” in decisions concerning the management and development of this establishment, underlines the formal notice from the SPUL, of which The duty got a copy. In this sense, the establishment is acting “illegally” by not taking into account the vast majority of the union’s recommendations in the process of reforming its statutes, the union alleges.
“For us, this is completely unacceptable because there are decisions that will be made that we will not understand how they were taken and they will have a concrete impact, particularly on the appointment of deans and department directors. », notes Marie-Hélène Parizeau.
According to her, the management model currently put forward by the university “centralizes governance at the executive level while for us, it is exactly the opposite that we asked for during the strike and obtained in the collective agreement “.
Right to vote
In order to change the situation, the union is asking in particular that all university professors have the right to vote in the process aimed at selecting the people sitting on the electoral college, responsible for electing the rector of the establishment, as well as within the various committees of the establishment.
“It seems trivial, but it has an impact on the entire chain. Before, it was the deans who designated the professors who went on these commissions, so there was a fairly clear bias of convergence of interests,” underlines Marie-Hélène Parizeau. However, this request, inspired by the gains made in the last collective agreement, has not received a favorable reception from the university to date, she deplores.