The 75 workers at the Centre l’Entre-Toit, an organization that helps people with mental health problems, will be on strike until Friday, as they are in the midst of negotiations to renew their collective agreement, which expired more than a year ago.
Published at 00:31
Updated at 7:00 a.m.
Thomas Emmanuel Side
The Press
The workers – mostly speakers, but also maintenance and food staff – had already rejected the employer’s latest offer by 97% and had given themselves a 16-day strike mandate with a similar proportion, about ten days ago.
L’Entre-Toit is a community organization whose mission is the stabilization and social reintegration of people struggling with dual mental health issues and legal or drug addiction problems.
The organization has four service points: three in Montreal (in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Saint-Henri and Montréal-Nord districts) and one in Saint-Jérôme.
“If we are striking today, it is to give ourselves the means to ensure the organization’s mission,” declared Mary-Christine Urizar-Ladouceur, president of the Union of Community Intervention Workers (STTIC–CSN), in a press release.
Due to our wages being below the industry average, we have a hard time recruiting and retaining staff. This has an impact on users as well as weighing on the shoulders of workers.
Mary-Christine Urizar-Ladouceur, President of STTIC
Since Entre-Toit is considered an “essential service,” the organization’s doors will remain open and users will continue to receive the services normally offered to them, despite the strike.
Flexibility and remuneration
Employees are asking for more flexibility at work, particularly considering the context of the clientele with whom they must interact: rehabilitation, drug addiction, mental health, etc.
Lucie Longchamp, vice-president of the parapublic and private sectors at the Fédération de la santé et des services sociaux (FSSS–CSN), deplores what she describes as a lack of “room to maneuver to try to get there emotionally and psychologically.”
Better pay is the union’s other main demand.
The basic salary of the workers paid by the employer is $20.50 per hour, “while on average in Montreal, it is between $25 and $30,” according to the union, which insists on the training of employees. “These are not people who suddenly became workers! Most have a baccalaureate.”
They want to save the mission. They know what they’re doing is important, but they’re still treated like cheap labor. !
Lucie Longchamp, Vice-President of the parapublic and private sectors at the FSSS
Finally, the union describes the employer as very “difficult” and as working “backwards”.me Longchamp also points out that more than half of the disputes in the 15 community establishments whose staff are represented by the FSSS come from the Centre l’Entre-Toit.
This collective agreement renewal is the first for Entre-Toit workers, who unionized for the first time in November 2019.
