Public sector negotiations have just hit a snag, as two large unions affiliated with the FTQ maintain that the texts transmitted by Quebec to allow the signing of collective agreements do not correspond to what was agreed at the negotiation tables.
For these two large unions — the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Syndicat québécois des employés de service (SQEES) — the agreement in principle, although ratified by the members, is downright “in danger”.
Since these agreements were ratified by the common front unions, of which the FTQ was a part, there has been an exchange of texts between the government and the union organizations — as is normally the case before the official signing of the conventions — in order to ensure that these correspond to what was agreed at the negotiation tables.
And that’s where the problem lies, according to CUPE and SQEES. These unions distinguish several distortions, affecting the payment of overtime at double rate, the deadline for payment of retroactivity, the start of the payment of new bonuses, in particular.
CUPE and SQEES accuse the government of not keeping its word. They claim that as a result, they are considering filing a bad faith negotiation complaint against the Quebec government.
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