The pressures made by the president of the Conseil du trésor du Québec, Sonia LeBel, to bypass the traditional negotiation tables are decried by the public service unions, who see it as a way of weakening their balance of power.
With its discussion forums, “the employer wants to bring us to a field where it controls the format, the subjects and the participants”, deplores Robert Comeau, president of the Alliance of professional and technical personnel in health and social services. , which notably represents psychologists in the public sector.
Minister LeBel wishes to discuss with all the unions during forums on care teams, primary education and mental health, among others. This formula would make it possible to avoid repeating the exercise at each negotiating table, argues Quebec.
Teachers are not all represented by the same central trade union, for example, it is noted: some unions are affiliated with the Central Trade Unions of Quebec, while others are affiliated with the Independent Federation of Education.
Waste of time, say unions
Faced with the refusal of the public service unions to participate in the exercise, Sonia LeBel revealed to the media on Wednesday morning some of the offers she intended to present, further irritating the main interested parties.
“To embark on a parallel discussion would only lengthen the delays”, denounced the Interprofessional Health Federation (FIQ) in a video communication addressed to its members at the end of the day. Discussions in a forum of this type would inevitably focus “on subjects that affect the management […] and its demands” rather than “dealing one by one with the union’s 60 demands at the official table”, pointed out Nathalie Perron, member of the FIQ negotiation committee.
“We receive this like a ton of rocks,” said the president of the Quebec Federation of Labor, Magali Picard, in an interview with The Canadian Press. She said she was disappointed with the “amateurism” of Quebec, which did not submit its offers to the negotiating teams themselves, as it should.
Quebec’s proposals
In education, the new offers from the Treasury Board provide for daycare employees to assist teachers in 15,000 of the 25,000 classes in the network. This approach is currently being tested in a hundred classes as a pilot project. “According to the feedback we have, it’s been very well received,” said Sonia LeBel.
In health, full-time nurses would have access to more holidays, and Quebec would undertake to better pay those who remain on the job on weekends. Proposals are also intended for psychologists in the public sector, but the minister remained very vague as to their nature, only mentioning an improvement in their “total remuneration”.
In total, these new proposals would cost the Quebec government an additional $700 million, estimates the minister.
Quebec has so far offered public sector employees wage increases of 9% over five years, plus a lump sum of $1,000, plus an amount equivalent to 2.5% reserved for “government priorities”. Quebec therefore claims to present an offer of up to 13% over five years.
With The Canadian Press