The game is not over, friends, far from it. The strikers are not about to put away their signs, and the parents are not about to return to a semblance of normal life.
To hear the figures circulating, the Common Front’s counter-offer would be equivalent to a salary increase of around 25% over five years. The Common Front demands to have the inflation forecast over the duration of the agreement (18.1%), in addition to a certain “enrichment” factor.
The gap is still abysmal between the two parties, therefore; it is around 12 percentage points, Quebec having increased its proposal to 12.7% over five years on Wednesday.
From the start, the Common Front demanded an increase equivalent to 23% over three years, and with this counter-offer, we would increase to around 25% over five years.
What is clear is that the union movement agrees to extend the duration of the contract, which would go from three years to up to five years, possibly, as requested by the government.
Since the beginning, the demand for enrichment beyond inflation was 9% over three years. The counter-offer does not specify the new figure over five years, based on what I hear from both camps, but it could be 9% over five years instead of three years or even a lower rate.
This lower rate could resemble the gap cited in the study by the Institute of Statistics of Quebec (ISQ) published on November 30. According to the ISQ, the unfavorable gap in the overall compensation of government employees compared to the market is around 7%. This gap takes into account the value of pension plans, vacation time, time off, work schedules and everything else.
Friday morning, the first vice-president of the CSN, François Enault, declared during a conference: “We have to catch up [à faire], you know it, you have seen the ISQ. We are talking about 7% in total remuneration, plus the indexation clause. This is what we ask1. »
As soon as the 7% figure was written in The Presshowever, the Common Front hastened to communicate with journalists to tell them that it is not the increase in enrichment that is expressly requested, without saying more.
For the employers’ side, the requested enrichment remains extremely vague, and the counter-offer is interpreted as a request for a catch-up of 9% over five years instead of three years. At most, Quebec interpreted that the Common Front had a margin of play on the 9%.
One thing is certain, for inflation, the union movement is adamant that it be measured for each calendar year from 2022, even if the employment contract begins on 1er April 2023.
As an argument, the Common Front puts forward that salary increases are based on inflation from the previous year, as is the case with the government’s general tax indexation parameters and Retraite Québec pensions. The management party disputes this interpretation.
The stakes are high. In 2022, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) peaked at 6.7%. Adding the forecasts for the next four calendar years from the Ministry of Finance – the common benchmark – the demands for inflation reach 18.1% over five years.
For its part, the government not only omits the year 2022, but bases its calculation of inflation on a year starting on 1er April 2023 (its financial year), rather than April 1er January. This three-month gap is not negligible, given that inflation began to fall on 2e quarter of 2023, a year after the start of the war in Ukraine.
In short, for Quebec, the inflation for the five years of the contract is 12.7% over five years, and the offer on Wednesday, December 6 exactly reflects this increase. Quebec adds special bonuses for certain groups, among others, representing 2.5%.
Another disagreement on salaries: the government judges that there is no catching up to be done, unlike the Common Front. The reason ? The 7% gap compared to the market cited by the ISQ includes comparables in the municipal and federal sectors, in particular. However, these two sectors have been overpaying their employees in Quebec for a long time, it is argued.
The government prefers to compare only with the private sector, as always, and in this regard, the ISQ concludes that there is no gap in overall remuneration2.
Another element: teachers are demanding a minimum salary increase of 4% per calendar year – therefore 20% over five years – so that their salaries catch up with inflation and meet the Canadian average. According to the latest analysis from Statistics Canada, the salary gap for teachers in Quebec compared to the Canadian average is around 8%. 3.
The problem is that the cost of living is around 10% lower in Quebec, particularly for housing and electricity. By integrating this aspect of the cost of living, the gap with the other provinces becomes non-existent.
In short, the two camps are still far from agreeing on salary clauses. The positions are all the further apart as the Common Front does not specifically want to include in the conventions the rate of inflation according to future forecasts, having been heated in the last convention.
He instead wants to leave the vague expression “increase according to the CPI”, as was seen at the end of the 1970s, which the management party refuses.
What do I think of it ? That the union side is taking far too long to make a serious counter-offer, after the two adjustments to the offer made by the government. And with an inflated proposal of around 25% over five years, it risks losing the battle for public opinion if it does not adjust quickly.
2. In addition, the ISQ study excludes companies with fewer than 200 employees, therefore SMEs, which generally pay their employees less, which makes the comparison advantageous for government employees compared to the entire private sector.