After extending an additional $1 billion yesterday, the Legault government is already ready to improve its offer to public sector employees. But the flexibility demanded in exchange amounts to a return of favoritism, believes the Common Front.
• Read also: Public sector negotiations: Quebec increases its offer to 12.7%, the Common Front maintains its strike
Less than 24 hours after increasing its salary offer from 10.3% to 12.7% over five years, the government is ready to add new sums in order to resolve the conflict with the state’s approximately 600,000 union members.
“It is so important for me to improve health and education services that we are open to other compromises,” declared Prime Minister François Legault on Thursday morning.
Even if Quebec assured that it had no room for maneuver this fall, Mr. Legault assures that the new offer worth $9 billion presented yesterday is “within the financial framework” of the government.
Flexibility demanded
In return, however, the Prime Minister is demanding more flexibility from the unions.
“It is important that all Quebecers understand that the negotiations we are currently conducting to renew collective agreements will be decisive for the future of the health and education networks,” declared François Legault. For decades, we have been unable to improve education and health services, largely because of the rigidity of collective agreements.”
He gives the example of a manager who agrees with an employee on a work schedule. “It could be rejected by the union,” laments Mr. Legault.
“It is not normal that our network is managed by unions rather than by managers,” he says.
Return of favoritism
But for the Common Front (FTQ, CSN, CSQ, APTS), Quebec’s request would mean a return to a time when the manager could decide who gets the most coveted schedules.
“From the moment we remove all responsibility from union executives to ensure that the decisions that are taken are fair, respectable, justified, we fall into old patterns 40 or 50 years ago,” declared the president of the FTQ, Magali Picard.
“We’re going to come back to: ‘she has blue eyes, I like that. She brings me my coffee in the morning. That’s what was happening,” she illustrated a little later, in English.
- Minister Bernard Drainville discusses the situation in schools with Yasmine Abdelfadel, via QUB radio:
At his side, the first vice-president of the CSN, François Enault, added that the government’s proposal on flexibility amounts to “tearing pages out of our collective agreements and seeking more management rights”.
Mr. Enault assures that the Common Front has proposed other measures to grant more flexibility, but refuses to reveal them.
No counter-offer
After quickly rejecting Quebec’s proposal on Wednesday, the Common Front does not intend to submit a formal counter-offer.
On the other hand, the unions are ready to move on several issues at the negotiating tables, assures the president of the CSQ, Éric Gingras. “Counter-offer cases, for us, are more media-oriented,” he says.
One thing is certain, the Common Front believes it has the support of the population, particularly after the publication of a Léger poll which indicates an increase in dissatisfaction with the Legault government.
“They gave us some money yesterday, then they tell us today that they already have more money. That means they have scrapped their offer from yesterday. It’s not me to show them how to negotiate, but still… We will continue,” said Mr. Enault.
Magali Picard questions the Prime Minister’s strategy. “I like to negotiate with people in control, people who have a plan, people who do it based on statistics, on standards. And there, I don’t have that assurance, that we are negotiating with a person who is in control, with a government which has experience and which knows where we should end up,” she said.
The Common Front still plans to hold its strike starting tomorrow, until December 14.
Meanwhile, the Autonomous Education Federation confirmed that it had submitted a new counter-offer on Thursday, after having rejected a proposed regulation the day before. Its members are at their 11e day of an indefinite general strike.