This text is part of the special Syndicalism booklet
The invitation from the President of the Conseil du trésor, Sonia LeBel, to participate in the three forums relating to the negotiations of the collective agreements for government employees (on health, education and mental health) was unanimously rejected by the unions. According to the Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE), the conditions are not met to negotiate win-win agreements for everyone.
The collective agreements, which cover approximately 600,000 state employees, expire at the end of the month. But for the FAE, Sonia LeBel is getting lost with this media confrontation. “During this time, unfortunately, we don’t talk about fund issues and solutions to improve the public services that we provide to the population, neither in public… nor in private! regrets Mélanie Hubert, President of the FAE, who received the offer from the President of the Treasury Board by email. “Our negotiating team was then in a meeting with the management party, which did not even deign to broach the subject,” underlines M.me Hubert.
Towards a win-win negotiation
As the United States prepares to bid farewell to former President Jimmy Carter, the AWF likes to recall one of the key phrases of this great peace negotiator: “Unless both sides win, an agreement cannot be permanent. This sentence resonates bitterly in the current context where the proposed negotiation will not allow the two parties to emerge as winners. “How could the professors accept that their representatives present themselves to these forums – which are not bodies recognized by law – when Mrs.me LeBel wants to isolate from the negotiation the most important subject for them: the composition of the class? asks Mélanie Hubert.
Within the framework of these informal forums, the government indeed proposes to discuss the aids to the class to be added. But for the FAE, the main problem lies in the current imbalance of classes in Quebec. “The aid offered by the government could probably help teachers and students, but this solution will not solve the heart of the problem: there are too many students in difficulty in certain classes and the aid offered is not professional resources the students most in difficulty need”, underlines Mr.me Hubert.
For a climate of trust
The AWF, which is not in its first negotiation, knows that it will have to make concessions in the negotiation process. “But how do we know which ones to do if we don’t know the gains we will achieve at our own bargaining table? An agreement is appreciated on the whole of the work, not on subjects taken in isolation, ”insists its president.
Moreover, a negotiation requires trust, listening, openness and creativity to allow a constructive dialogue that will lead to mutual benefits. ” When Mme LeBel wants to force the unions to participate in these forums and that she does so in such a peremptory tone, she does not create the space for respectful discussion necessary for the proper conduct of a negotiation. Moreover, by wavering on the nature of these forums, Mme LeBel harbors suspicion: will we be free to have divergent opinions or will we be forced into consensus? asks Mélanie Hubert.
The President of the AWF reminds Mr.me LeBel that she is not managing this negotiation with “the Tony Accursos of this world”, but with her employees, mostly women, who have been at the front during the pandemic and who continue to be so every day, while the task is heavy and that they face violence on the front line. “They are not responsible for the ills of the two largest public service sectors of health and education. They are part of the solution,” she says.
Mélanie Hubert also notes that in the union environment, it is finally mostly women who negotiate for women at her side: Josée Scalabrini at the FSE, Magali Picard at the FTQ, Julie Bouchard at the FIQ and Caroline Senneville at the CSN . “We no longer copy the male model, but we now do things our way. Many studies show that women are more collaborative and cooperative, which makes them good negotiators,” she argues. But she observes that M.me LeBel continues to negotiate on an old model, using the allegory of the “glitch” to get his point across.
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the Duty, relating to marketing. The drafting of Duty did not take part.