(Montreal) Starting Tuesday, the 80,000 members of the FIQ are asked to vote on the conciliator’s recommendation with a view to renewing their collective agreement.
Posted at 10:22 a.m.
Lia Levesque
The Canadian Press
Member voting takes place from Tuesday 8 p.m. to Thursday 8 p.m. It comes after the holding of general assemblies which took place in the previous weeks to inform members of the content of the conciliator’s proposal.
The Interprofessional Health Federation represents the vast majority of nurses, practical nurses, respiratory therapists and clinical perfusionists in Quebec.
This is indeed a proposal recommended by the conciliator, and not an agreement in principle. This recommendation was presented by the conciliator as “a reasonable balance between the parties,” reported the FIQ when this proposal was announced.
If this recommendation were ratified by the members, it would become the FIQ collective agreement.
If it was not, the parties would likely have to return to the negotiating table.
Moreover, an agreement in principle was reached between the parties, but it was the members who rejected it, in a proportion of 61%, last spring.
Since this rejection, as part of the discussions that followed, the mobility required of nurses has been further defined, according to the FIQ presentation text submitted to its members.
This question of mobility, of nurses moving from one care unit to another, or even from one establishment to another, was at the heart of the dispute and the main reason why the agreement in principle had been rejected.
