(Quebec) The Legault government will improve its salary offer if the unions in the health and education network relax the rules for organizing work.
“Come to the negotiating table. In exchange for this flexibility, we are ready to improve our offer which, for the moment, represents an offer of 14.8%. We are ready to improve it,” said Prime Minister François Legault during a press scrum Thursday at the National Assembly.
This statement comes as nearly 600,000 public sector workers take to the streets to demand better working conditions.
We won’t start putting numbers here, but we are ready to improve both on the basic parameters side and on the sectoral side. But what is essential is to be able to seek flexibility to finally provide effective services.
François Legault
He believes that the current negotiation is “decisive for the future of the health network and the education network”, and his government is asking the unions for more “flexibility”.
Individual rights before union rights
The Minister of Health Christian Dubé affirms that his reform cannot be carried out without these union concessions. “Our staff must have the choice to do what they want to do when they want to do it. Those who want to work 12-hour shifts must be able to do so. This should not be blocked by the union. If they want to move between different establishments, they must be able to do so,” said Mr. Dubé.
We must change union rights for personal rights.
Christian Dubé
Another example given by the Legault government: the need to modify the way of assigning classes to teachers. “For teachers, this doesn’t make good sense at the moment. The choice of times is made in August, while the start of the school year is at the end of August, beginning of September. It leads to a psychodrama every year where we start by saying: there is a shortage of 8,000 teachers, 9,000 teachers, and once everything is in place, this number is much reduced,” said Mr. Legault.
The Minister of Education Bernard Drainville even says that this is his priority. He told the striking teachers to send the message to their “union leaders that they must come back to us with a counter-offer on the issues of the negotiation. »
“We have not yet had a real counter-offer on the major issues of the negotiation. These are not jokes. I say it from the outset, my priority, I want us to change the rules for assigning teachers so that we no longer end up with chaotic school starts,” he said.