(Quebec) Teachers affiliated with the Independent Federation of Education (FAE) are asking for a new salary catch-up, ie a 4% increase per year over three years, in addition to raising their salaries to the Canadian average.
Posted at 8:56
Updated at 9:39 a.m.
Negotiations are already resuming between Quebec and the public sector unions, while the last collective agreements for the period from 2020 to March 2023 were ratified in the spring of 2021. After the FAE on Thursday, it will be the turn of the CSN, the CSQ, the FTQ and the APTS, united in a common front, to submit their demands to the Treasury Board on Friday, again chaired for these negotiations by Minister Sonia LeBel.
If she declared that the last agreement with the government marked “the history of the profession”, qualifying the advances as “major”, since by remunerating teachers better, “it will revalue the profession, contribute to favoring the attraction and the retention, and therefore counteract the effects of the current shortage in public schools in Quebec”, the FAE believes this year that “we must not stop halfway”.
At the salary level, the some 60,000 teachers represented by the union are asking for a basic catch-up at the level of the Canadian average (an increase estimated at 7.8%), in addition to an annual salary increase linked to the price index. (CPI), with a minimum of 4% per year over three years.
“François Legault may tell us that he has increased salaries [lors de la dernière convention collective], you still have to understand that in Canada, Quebec teachers are the least well paid at the start. They earn about $5,000 less than their compatriots in other provinces. And at the end, despite the catch-up we did, the teachers earn $3,000 less than [leurs homologues] in Canada”, denounced Thursday before the Parliament in Quebec Mélanie Hubert, president of the FAE.
“With GDP, comparing yourself with Ontario is fine. When we talk about doctors’ salaries, comparing ourselves with other provinces is correct. But compare [le salaire des] teachers, isn’t that right? Me, I don’t buy that salad, ”she added.
Recurring requests
The teachers represented by the FAE are also asking the Legault government to increase their leave for family reasons and to open new classes adapted to the needs of students with learning and adaptation difficulties, among others.
Among the union’s demands are several demands that come up in every negotiation with the government. The President of the FAE, Mélanie Hubert, believes that it is time for the Ministry of Education to obtain reliable statistics that would make it possible to measure the effects of the measures put in place in the renewal of collective agreements and to have the time if the conditions essential to quality teaching improve over the years.
“We could first try to better observe what happens from the entrance to the baccalaureate [en enseignement] », during the internships, « and all [la question de] professional integration at the start of a career”, listed Mme Hubert.
“There are still 25 to 30% of our young people who desert the profession. We denounced that 20 years ago! That could be an indicator that we are aiming to change. In our opinion, if the conditions were attractive, people would not leave us after five years,” she said.