Without an employment contract for a year, unionized workers in the public health and education sectors will undertake a mobilization on Monday that will take place across the province and will extend over three days. In order to denounce the perceived slowness of the negotiations started with the provincial government in the fall of 2019, union members will demonstrate in particular in Granby, Montmagny, Drummondville, Quebec and Montreal.
Monday morning, members of the Federation of Quebec Workers (FTQ) will gather in front of the offices of the ministers responsible for certain regions of Quebec, namely François Bonnardel (Estrie), Geneviève Guilbault (Capitale-Nationale), André Lamontagne (Center-du-Québec) and Marie-Ève Proulx (Chaudière-Appalaches and Bas-Saint- Laurent).
The next day a car convoy will roam the streets of downtown Quebec. Having as its starting point the Galeries de la Capitale, the convoy “will roll slowly in the city in order to be seen and heard” according to a press release issued by the FTQ on Sunday. The convoy will first go to the National Assembly.
The demonstrators will lay shoes in front of the parliament to underline “that the negotiations are trampling”. Union members will then go to the FTQ offices for a rally.
Sound the alarm
Wednesday, two simultaneous walks are planned in Montreal and Quebec. The FTQ as well as seven other central labor organizations representing different trades in the public service will participate. The theme of these events will be “Ringing the Alarm”.
“It is high time we managed to reach collective agreements. It is assumed that public sector employees have a good job with job security, a decent income, a pension, retirement and insurance plan. But at the same time, there is a salary delay that is growing year after year, ”indicates the president of the FTQ, Daniel Boyer.
In its annual report published last November, the Institut de la statistique du Québec revealed that the total compensation of employees in the Quebec administration has, since 2011, been increasingly lagging behind that of all other employees in Quebec. . This gap has fallen from 6.1% in 2011 to 9.2% in 2020.
However, in 2020, employees of the Quebec administration show parity with those of the private sector in terms of total compensation.
Negotiations
The FTQ represents 50,000 health and education workers who have been without a collective agreement since March 31, 2020. Among them are nurses, nursing assistants, orderlies, support employees as well as certain professionals and technicians. .
“The workers we represent have had enough. The negotiations have dragged on for too long. It’s no secret that health, education and social services personnel are tired, exhausted and keep services at arm’s length. The recognition of their work and their dedication must go through better conditions ”, indicates the president of the FTQ, Daniel Boyer.
Mr. Boyer says the negotiations “are not progressing”.
“Mr. Legault summoned us at the start of the pandemic. He told us he wanted to speed up negotiations to put this behind us and tackle the pandemic. But since then, the government has not budged from its initial proposal of December 2019. We have provoked things. But there were no substantial proposals from them which would allow us to hope for a settlement in the very near future ”, – Daniel Boyer
The latter believes that the pay gap for government employees creates a problem of attracting and retaining staff.
“We saw it with the orderlies. The government had to create a special program to attract 10,000 and increase the hourly wage by $ 5 an hour. We have been going through this for years and not only in terms of beneficiary attendants, but in all types of employment. We must review the organization of work and add more staff, ”he notes.
The president of the Treasury Board, Sonia Lebel, would have summoned the unions representing state employees for a meeting on Tuesday evening.
–
