The tone is rising in the negotiations between the teachers and Quebec: a first teachers’ union gives the green light to an unlimited general strike, which could be called from the start of the school year this fall.
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Gathered at a meeting on Tuesday evening, some 600 members of the Alliance of Teachers of Montreal approved 98.2% of the use of the strike from the start of the 2023-2024 school year. They also spoke about a broader action plan including a series of means of pressure.
This unlimited general strike vote is a proposal that emanates from the Alliance, and not from the Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE) to which the Montreal union is affiliated.
“We are experiencing an exodus of our teachers, who are going to teach elsewhere, we have students with very great needs, so our members have clearly told us that they are there. We will have to take drastic measures,” says Catherine Beauvais-St-Pierre, president of the Alliance.
“We are light years away from finding solutions that come together,” she adds to illustrate how huge the gap is at the negotiating tables right now.
The filing of project 23, as well as the salary increase that Quebec wants to grant to elected officials, has also come to throw oil on the game, which explains “the urgency to mobilize” for teachers, adds Mme Beauvais-St-Pierre.
The other local unions affiliated with the FAE, which brings together 60,000 teachers, will also decide shortly on a series of means of pressure.
A global mobilization plan will then be adopted by the union federation in mid-June, following the proposals endorsed by each of the local unions.
This vote for an unlimited general strike “shows how far teachers are ready to go if it is not resolved”, indicates for her part the president of the FAE, Mélanie Hubert.
Intensification of negotiations demanded by Quebec
This vote comes as Quebec announced Wednesday morning an “intensification of negotiations” until the end of the summer, particularly in health and education.
The Legault government has also announced a lump sum of $12,000 which will be offered to each of the 7,000 teachers eligible for retirement who agree, on a voluntary basis, to remain at work full time next year.
The teachers’ unions, however, consider that this initiative comes much too late, since teachers who wish to retire at the start of the school year have already taken the steps at this time of the school year. “It’s deplorable that we take it so late, it’s being completely disconnected from the reality of the school environment,” says Mélanie Hubert.
On the side of the Federation of Teachers’ Unions, which represents 87,000 teachers, it is recalled that the teachers are above all demanding an improvement in their working conditions.
Its president, Josée Scalabrini, denounces the slowness of negotiations with Quebec for weeks and deplores that the “real issues” have not yet been addressed at the negotiating table, where the employer wants “only to talk about continuing education”.
At the FSE, visibility actions have begun and will intensify from the end of May. No strike mandate is currently on the table.