The fate of the agreement in principle concluded between the Autonomous Education Federation (FAE) and Quebec could be sealed this evening, if the members of the Basses-Laurentides union approve it.
• Read also: A fourth union affiliated with the FAE narrowly accepts the agreement in principle
• Read also: The Outaouais Education Union votes in favor of the agreement
• Read also: “All that for that?”: here is how the content of the agreement in principle could improve the fate of students… or not
Tuesday evening, a fourth union affiliated with the FAE, the Syndicat de l’enseignement de l’Ouest de Montréal, narrowly approved the agreement, with a very slim majority of 51%.
To be ratified, the agreement in principle must be accepted by at least five of the nine local unions affiliated with the FAE and by the majority of all the members it represents.
So far, teachers from five unions have spoken out at a general assembly and only one group, those from Laval, rejected the agreement by 68%.
The members of the Alliance of Professors of Montreal rather accepted it with a very slim majority (52%) while those of Pointe-de-l’Île and Outaouais voted in favor by nearly 60 % (respectively 58.5% and 57%).
The four unions alone which have already approved the agreement represent 56% of the members of the FAE, which has a total of 66,500, so that the majority of mandates required in the Federal Negotiating Council have already been reached.
If the members of the Basses-Laurentides Education Union approve the agreement during the general assembly scheduled for Wednesday evening, a majority of local unions affiliated with the FAE will therefore have given their green light, which will allow the Federative Council to negotiation of the FAE to officially ratify the agreement in principle subsequently.
Voting will still continue in other local unions until January 31.
The very close results at several general assemblies, however, demonstrate the extent to which the agreement in principle, reached at the end of December after more than 20 days of strike, divides teachers.
On the salary front, the proposed regulation provides for average salary increases of 21.5%, but it is above all the provisions surrounding the “composition of the class”, at the heart of the union demands, which disappoint several teachers.
Common front
As for teachers represented by the Federation of Education Unions (FSE-CSQ), which is part of the Common Front, votes in the 34 local unions are going well.
Their members vote in two stages: they vote on the intersectoral agreement which concerns the remuneration negotiated at the central table by the Common Front and, separately, on the sectoral agreement which specifically concerns their working conditions.
The intersectoral agreement garners strong support from union members, while the verdict is more mixed for working conditions, where the measures surrounding the composition of the class also cause some disappointment.
According to the results that have been made public so far, five local unions affiliated with the FSE-CSQ have approved the sectoral agreement, including teachers from Estrie with a very slim majority of 50.5%.
Members of two other unions, in Lanaudière and Trois-Rivières, instead rejected the agreement on working conditions.