Ministerial Order 071, presented in the context of COVID-19 to offer bonuses to nurses, without having negotiated them with the FIQ, thwarted several clauses of the FIQ collective agreement, which had just been concluded.
This is what testified before the Administrative Labor Tribunal on Tuesday, the union advisor of the Interprofessional Health Federation (FIQ) and spokesperson at the negotiation tables, Sophie Guilbault.
Administrative judge Myriam Bédard hears the FIQ’s complaint for obstructing union activities and bad faith bargaining against the Quebec government, in connection with Ministerial Order 2021-071. Other unions in the health sector have also filed obstruction complaints and must be heard.
The basic problem stems from the fact that the FIQ had spent a year and a half negotiating the collective agreement for its 76,000 members, being told that the government had no more money, that it had offered the maximum that he could.
Even the bonuses that the FIQ claimed to make full-time positions more attractive were rejected by government negotiators because they were deemed too costly, reported Ms. Guilbault.
On many occasions during her testimony, she reported being told by government negotiators that Quebec had no more money, that it had to respect taxpayers’ ability to pay.
The FIQ had submitted its demands in October 2019. And it was after long negotiations, counter-proposals, refusals and returns, that it had succeeded, with difficulty and misery, in concluding an agreement in principle with Quebec. Its members had ratified it in August 2021.
Ms. Guilbautt was therefore flabbergasted to hear the Legault government, at a press conference in September 2021, announce that it was ready to inject $ 1 billion into various measures to attract nurses and encourage them to work full time.
“Both arms fall to the ground,” exclaimed Ms. Guilbault.
“We are in the middle of writing the texts” of the collective agreement which has been ratified by the members.
“It was never discussed. The $15,000 (one of the bonuses offered), never, never, never did they mention it to us” during the negotiation of the collective agreement, testified Ms. Guilbault.
The trade unionist described ministerial decree 071 as “a patch for one year” and which comes “to completely thwart the flagship measures that we have put in place in the collective agreement”.
She cited a few examples of these clashes between the collective agreement concluded and the ministerial decree, affecting pilot projects for working on weekends, for example, or other measures aimed at “making full-time positions more attractive “.
The hearing of the case will take a few more days in March. The CSQ and the CSN must also be heard. CUPE and SQEES, both affiliated with the FTQ, as well as the APTS are also interveners in the case.