There was a lot of collective concern over the fact that, on the eve of the start of classes in August, some 8,000 teachers were missing.
The Minister of Education Bernard Drainville then seemed almost as disconcerted as when his leader, last winter, abandoned the third link.
Then the figure of 8,000 started to melt away. And despite a real shortage of teachers, we found ourselves far from the cataclysm feared two weeks earlier.
- Listen to the political meeting between Antoine Robitaille and Benoit Dutrizac via QUB radio :
Trauma
This traumatic experience led many, in the government and in the population, to demand that from now on, task assignments be done at the end of May or in June. Which seems to make sense.
This would avoid a lot of unnecessary stress for parents, school principals, the minister… and of course the teachers themselves! (In my short career as a college professor, I remember the shock of learning, in mid-August, that I was to, a few days later, begin teaching the course “Political History of the West.”)
Distributing tasks earlier seems to suit everyone. François Legault and his president of the Treasury Board, Sonia LeBel, made it an example of “sought-after flexibility” last week.
PHOTO AGENCY QMI, TOMA ICZKOVITS
Where it sticks
Liberal MP Marwah Rizqy found herself lifting a taboo, last Thursday at the Salon Bleu, on one of the main causes of the assignment of tasks at the last minute. She addressed Sonia LeBel: “Can you admit that when you ask teachers to be available from June 30 […] will they have to refuse unemployment? Can you say that?”
LeBel dodged the question, both in and out of the room. In the union camp, we are rather cautious while saying that the simple solution would be to increase the number of permanent positions. To which the government camp does not seem closed.
When you are a teacher with precarious status, but full time, you receive in 10 months as much as permanent teachers, but the emoluments of the latter are distributed over 12 months.
Prime
Many precarious workers have therefore gotten into the habit of claiming “unemployment” for the summer months, by checking a box in the forms by which they certify that they are not sure that they will be offered a job any time soon. “It was true when there was a glut of teachers,” a source familiar with the matter explains to me. “But today, with staff shortages, all precarious workers are almost certain to return in August.” These people are jealous: they get their full salary in 10 months, with a “bonus” of two months of unemployment. Hence the “financial compensation” that a union is considering asking for at the tables. “Since a job is practically guaranteed, we are not even sure that it is still legal” to receive employment insurance in this way, an informant confided to me.
Other issues would prevent tasks from being assigned earlier, but no source seemed to have any other examples to give me than this matter of loss of “unemployment”. In any case, we seem far from the official nonsense according to which only the student is at the heart of concerns…
