(Montreal) The Quebec Cannabis Society and the Canadian Union of Public Employees will meet before the conciliator on Friday, while the strike affecting certain branches has been going on for more than four months now.
Posted at 11:43 a.m.
Updated at 3:28 p.m.
The strike by members of a local section of CUPE, affiliated with the FTQ, affects 22 branches of the SQDC. It had been triggered indefinitely on May 28, after a sporadic strike lasting a few days.
In dispute
Remuneration is at the heart of the dispute. The entry-level wage at the SQDC is currently $17.12 an hour, said David Clément, president of the CUPE local concerned, in an interview on Monday.
It compares its members’ compensation to that of their peers at the Liquor Corporation, another Crown corporation. Cashier-salespersons in SAQ stores earn a salary of $21.50 an hour at the entry level.
What we want is to really negotiate. Then our members were clear: it’s wages that must be above $20 an hour [à la SQDC aussi].
David Clément, president of the relevant CFS local
Normative issues have been resolved.
CUPE finds itself faced with an additional difficulty in its negotiations with the SQDC: the union members of the Federation of Public Service Employees, affiliated with the CSN, present in other branches, accepted an agreement that its members deemed insufficient.
” Absolutely not [suffisante]. On July 17, we consulted all the members of our union and, unanimously, the members told us ‘no, we don’t accept that, we continue the fight to obtain a salary comparable to other companies [d’État] “, reported Mr. Clement.
Friday’s conciliation meeting will therefore be important, after more than four months of strike action.
“We are going there in a spirit of openness. We want to sit down at the table, have frank, objective discussions with our employer. And we are convinced that if we have open discussions with the employer on this, we are able to come to an agreement. But this agreement will have to include a decent salary for our members,” said Mr. Clément.
Reached by email and telephone, the SQDC had not made its comments known at the time of publication.
Again in recent days, she said she hoped “always to reach a negotiated agreement, to the satisfaction of the parties” and to be “available to sit down at the negotiating table at all times”.
About half of SQDC branches have employees who are unionized.