Some 12,000 workers in early childhood centers will be called upon to decide, in November, on a strike mandate.
The mandate requested by the unions of the Federation of Health and Social Services, affiliated with the CSN, is one of five days of strike. These could be carried out in blocks of days or individually, but not in half-days.
The assemblies to vote on this strike mandate will take place from November 2 to 15, Stéphanie Vachon, representative of the CPE sector at the federation, said in an interview on Tuesday.
If strike days were indeed to be called, they could therefore take place at the end of November.
“We find it a shame to have to go there. We say to ourselves: the staff shortage is so great, right now the government should ask us what it can do to keep the staff in place! We don’t see why we need to mobilize, but we have no choice but to go there,” said Ms. Vachon.
“We hope that this will put pressure on to obtain more dates (of negotiations), more serious discussions, then a commitment from the management side to really resolve the staff shortage in the long term,” she said. added.
Quebec submitted its offers to workers in CPEs last April. The president of the Treasury Board, Sonia LeBel, said she wanted to wait until all the main unions had submitted their requests before submitting her offers.
Quebec is also struggling with a shortage of educators in daycare services and, for this reason, it is trying to optimize the use of those who are already in position.
Salary, leave, workload are among the points in dispute. Ms. Vachon reports that Quebec is offering a 12.7% increase over five years, while it has settled with the public sector for 17.4% over five years.
Negotiations are not over yet. The parties continue to negotiate; dates are set for October and November.
“We agreed on small things,” reports Ms. Vachon, but “the positions are very far apart.”
The FSSS does not represent all workers in Early Childhood Centers; others are unionized with other organizations or are not unionized.
