(Montreal) With the Legault government, “there is hardly any social dialogue”. He decided he would rule on his own, without listening to the workers on the ground – with the results it gives.
This diagnosis, it is the president of the FTQ, Daniel Boyer, who poses it, in an interview on Friday with The Canadian Press to take stock of the end of the year.
The president of the largest labor center in Quebec points to the mixed success of the $ 15,000 payment program for nurses returning to the public network full-time as proof. Several conditions were attached to it and these were never negotiated by the unions concerned.
He cites other examples where initiatives have been announced without consulting workers’ representatives, such as unilaterally decided wage increases announced in the middle of negotiations with beneficiary attendants and childcare workers.
“There is a problem of social dialogue and respect for unions and workers,” concludes Mr. Boyer.
“At the end of the day, I may be frustrated when I say that the Prime Minister is going over the heads of the unions, but at the end of the day, it is the workers who are being played.
“It seems to me that if he had established a social dialogue, with the sums of money that were spent, I think that we would have found even more interesting solutions that would have been more effective. […] On the ground, our members have good ideas. And these are ideas that come from the field, so they are very likely to work, ”he adds.
Vaccinated by solidarity
Moreover, while the Omicron variant has just changed the game in many workplaces, Mr. Boyer invites people to be vaccinated, in solidarity with health workers.
“You have to get vaccinated. Solidarity begins precisely at such times, ”launches the president of the central with more than 600,000 members. He is careful to remember that the FTQ has always tried to convince its members to get vaccinated.
“Well done if we have third doses, but we must also think of those who have not had any dose elsewhere in the world. If we do not think of these less fortunate people – it is true in Quebec and it is true elsewhere in the world… That goes through there, solidarity. If we don’t do that, we will have variants like we have, and we will never come to the end of that, ”concludes Mr. Boyer.
Health system
Mr. Boyer is worried about the health system, for which large unions such as the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Quebec Union of Service Employees (SQEES) represent thousands of patient attendants.
“Our health care system has been damaged. It goes more and more crooked. There are some who fall in battle, ”laments the president of the Federation of Workers of Quebec.
“There is a shortage of manpower. There, we are looking for vaccinators. Our health network should be better organized, and not just in times of pandemic. It strikes us in the eyes there, in times of pandemic, because we see that there is not much that works. But there are many cases that also do not work when we are not in a pandemic, in our large network. And we will have to see to it, because we will not be able to do it otherwise, ”concludes Mr. Boyer.