A first meeting of the common front of the unions representing the CSN, the CSQ, the TFT and the CSD with the government took place in Quebec City on Tuesday to take stock, but the gap remains significant between what it is asking for and the Quebec proposal.
The government is proposing a salary increase of 9% over 5 years while the union would like around 21% over the same period.
Quebec will therefore have to improve its offer if it wants to avoid a labor dispute.
“The population sees the services it currently has with shortages everywhere, shares the president of the CSQ, Éric Girard. But in a school, an RPA, a hospital, a CEGEP, that cannot happen.
“What we have to manage is people in the public sector that we no longer attract, people that we no longer retain, adds the president of the CSN, Caroline Senneville. There are people who died during the pandemic of thirst, not because we lacked important technology and we brought in the army.”
However, there are still several months of negotiations between the two parties.
The May 2 meeting was mainly to take stock.
“We try to identify common interests, and the more we increase common interests, the more we reduce the field of divergent interests, and there is an openness to seek solutions on both sides, indicates the Minister of Labor, Jean Boulet. So I am not thinking of the strike, we are not in a dynamic of this nature.
The two parties seem for the moment open to dialogue.
Watch the full explanation in the video above.