Despite “heartbreaking choices” that had to be made, the FIQ negotiated “a good agreement” in principle, which includes “interesting advances,” argues its president, Julie Bouchard.
In interview with The Canadian Press On Wednesday, the president of the Interprofessional Health Federation wanted to defend this agreement in principle, while some declared themselves dissatisfied with it on social media.
The 80,000 members of the FIQ will be called to vote on April 10, 11 and 12.
Mme Bouchard cites several gains, including the start of work to implement nurse/patient ratios — a request from the FIQ “for 10 years”.
She also underlines the fact of having “succeeded in getting the government to back down” on compulsory travel for nurses. “Someone can do it voluntarily, but the employer does not have the right to impose it. »
She also cites a statement on TSO, mandatory overtime, against which the FIQ has been fighting for years. “We never had any legal lever, in the collective agreement, to allow us to make managers accountable,” explains M.me Bouchard.
“This time, there is this definition which says that under no other pretext than for an urgent or exceptional measure, managers cannot keep a healthcare professional on mandatory overtime. This may seem trivial to many people, but for us, it is a very important lever. »
A sign of the scale of the problem for the FIQ and its members: no less than 30,000 grievances, individual or collective, have been filed for TSO.