We must admit that the image is striking: according to Christian Dubé, if the issue of bonuses for nurses does not unlock, it is because the union representatives also want to touch the $ 15,000.
The delegates have a position in the health network, but are “freed” to organize unionism. There are 300 of them. If they want to get the bonus, they can go back to the floor, right? The bonus is to attract and retain nurses, not to reward union members.
The Minister of Health, patient if ever there was one, goes a little fast in business by asserting that the greed of union representatives explains the problem of recruiting new nurses.
Do you really think it’s all blocked because a few delegates want to pocket a bonus that they don’t deserve?
These bonuses were not negotiated, they were decreed by the government and designed by officials. We all agree: there is no time to waste, it is a national emergency.
But we should not be surprised to see the unions react badly if we do not involve them in the implementation plan, which includes all kinds of conditions – which is normal – which have not been negotiated, clarified and justified. – which is not.
Yes, we must “change the culture” in the world of health, we do not need a commission of inquiry to find out. Also true, the slightest flap of the wing of a regulatory butterfly in Quebec can create a hurricane in a hospital in the Outaouais.
But weren’t you tempted to chat with the nurses’ unions and others before writing the ministerial decree, so that they “collaborate”? A culture changes together, and I’m not sure that all the blame is on the union side, and not at all on the bureaucratic side …
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This is not the first time that the Legault government has sent its messages over the heads of union leaders. At the height of the negotiations with the educators of the CPEs, he decreed immediate salary increases.
Isn’t that obvious proof of good faith, a sort of gift?
It is above all a maneuver to destabilize union negotiators and put pressure on members and public opinion.
In principle, labor laws prohibit this kind of maneuver, and these “messages” to members and the public sent subtly by the employer are at least in a gray area.
It might sound politically smart, considering that unions don’t get a good press and smashing a little sugar every now and then on their backs pays off.
There is still more than one responsible for the critically fragile state of our health system. There are still successive governments that have negotiated and imposed conditions and ways of doing things that today we find absurd.
I know that we are in an election year and that identifying the impediments to “advancing Quebec” is irresistible. But the “public” also knows what it has cost, what it is still costing the women and men who were on the front lines in a system in short supply. We cannot decree everything with impunity against their unions, under the pretext that there is resistance and rigidities.
Not far behind these unions, there are these workers, and a lot of solidarity accompanies them.
We will not change “culture”, as exasperating as it is, with ministerial decrees, without getting everyone involved. If this “new culture” without “confrontation” is really the objective, not sure that it is really blocked …