Dissatisfied with the progress of negotiations with the government, the unions say they have “every reason to believe” that there will be a strike by 420,000 public sector employees this fall.
“The Legault government will really have to understand that we are serious here […]. It’s not a wish, but with the indications we have so far, barring an extraordinary turnaround, I think we have every reason to believe that we will increase the means of pressure”, launched the president of the FTQ, Magali Picard, during a press conference of the Interunion Common Front, Tuesday morning, in Montreal.
The unions have indeed received from their members the mandate to prepare a strike scenario for next fall. “It will be a national strategy,” warned François Enault, first vice-president of the CSN. “If the members decide to give mandates, 420,000 members will go out on strike.”
“But that’s not the goal, assured the president of the CSQ, Éric Gingras. The goal is to have an agreement in the coming weeks.
- Listen to Marie Montpetit’s interview with François Enault, first vice-president of the CSN via QUB-radio :
However, this goal seems remote in the eyes of the trade union leaders, who deplore that the negotiations “are not moving forward” and that the government turns a deaf ear to their demands.
On the salary level, the Common Front is demanding a salary increase of $100 per week for all public sector workers for 2023, then an annual indexation of salaries based on the consumer price index.
For its part, the government maintains its initial offer of a salary increase of 9% over five years, argued the union leaders.
When a journalist asked him why, in his opinion, the government is so reluctant to agree to union demands, Éric Gingras replied that Quebec is negotiating with the same strategies as in the past, when public service employees had excellent working conditions. work.
“But that’s not it anymore,” he lamented. We don’t attract [les employés]Onne [les] do not keep, wages are no longer competitive.
Then, François Enault added that the government is actively working on the privatization of services, and that the devaluation of the public sector is one of its strategies to achieve this.
“It’s not for nothing that some people are invited to pheasant hunting on a private island,” he said. It is because it is the private that is there. This is the hidden face of this government, the privatization of the public sector, and that is why they are giving us nothing and why they do not want it to work right now.”