At a table in a bar on rue Saint-Denis, we are the essence of the mid-twenties and the end of the university years. Pandemic obliges, we finished our respective baccalaureates in the solitude of our apartments or, for the lucky ones, in the basement of our parents.
Posted yesterday at 11:00 a.m.
Graduated by Zoom and the graduation celebrated at the convenience store picket, we are ready to begin our adult life and, above all, to put these long years of study to good use. Nurses, professors, lawyers, engineers, architects, all careers crowd around the table.
In debt from student loans and insane rents, we share a single pitcher of sangria drowned in Fruitopia. Laughing, one of us launches that at least this rationing will stop soon since we will finally make money. The embarrassment sets in. It’s because, you see, at this table wage disparity reigns.
To access the profession within the framework of trades requiring professional training, it is inevitably necessary to carry out an internship before obtaining the title. Said internships generally extend over a period of three to six months and require an involvement of approximately 40 hours per week on the part of the students.
Although the premise is similar in every way to that of all workers (employment contract, schedule, obligations), the gap is widening between interns and employees. These are governed by the Labor Standards Act and the regulation of the same name which ensure a minimum wage, which some will say is insufficient to meet the current cost of living. However, trainees are specifically excluded from this Lévesquian protection.
After spending three years in the law degree, where very few students combine work and studies, these new graduates begin their study for the Bar, in four or eight months, during which it is more than contraindicated for their mental health. and physical to work. You also have to find accommodation in the big cities to carry out said studies – or drive around wondering if the gas pump is trying to get us hold-upper at each fill-up.
Why ?
Spring 1981, a confident Pierre Marc Johnson tabled Bill 126, the first version of the Labor Standards Act. Under the guise of protecting non-unionized workers from cash-hungry employers, the Labor Standards Act was intended to offer an absolute minimum to ensure the sustainability of the salaried consumer, voter and taxpayer.
The respectability of this law is clouded by the comments of the members regarding section 35. Indeed, section 35 grants an almost unlimited regulatory power to the minister to adopt without council or quorum any regulation he pleases.
Barely a year later, Minister Johnson adopted without question or comment the Regulation respecting labor standards, and more particularly section 2 (2) which sends shivers down the spine of all high school graduates in search of vocational training and the success they have promised these many years of study.
The missed opportunity
In 2018, the CAQ is in the middle of an election campaign and is trying to encourage a younger population to vote. Among his plans is the improvement of working conditions for trainees.
In an attempt that could almost be described as humorous, Minister Jean Boulet tables in December 2021 the bill noh 14, An Act to ensure the protection of interns in the workplace, adopted of course unanimously. Very little revolutionary, the project grants certain holidays and sick leave to trainees and a remedy in the event of psychological harassment.
Professional orders, such as the Barreau du Québec, clear themselves of this problem by washing their hands with “we no longer display internships paid below the minimum wage threshold on the École du Barreau website” . Hiding the problem is not solving it.
In this tragicomic vein, we also find the ironic article 41.1 of the Labor Standards Act which adds to the absurdity of fate: an employer cannot grant an employee a wage rate lower than that granted to his other employees who perform the same tasks in the same establishment solely because of his employment status […].
How to promote and encourage the higher education and professions that society glorifies when so many pitfalls are sown along the way to get there? Who will have the means to go to the profession? While it costs about $32,000 per year for a young professional in the metropolis, only children from well-off families or lucky enough to have a family basement large enough to live in until they are 30 will get there.