(Montreal) Public sector negotiations have just hit a major pitfall: the FTQ refuses to sign the texts of the collective agreements as submitted by Quebec, arguing that the wording does not correspond to what was agreed at the negotiation tables.
Published at 1:20 p.m.
Updated at 2:49 p.m.
Lia Levesque
The Canadian Press
For its two major affiliated unions concerned – the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Syndicat québécois des employes de service (SQEES) – the agreement in principle, although ratified by the members, is downright “in danger”.
The FTQ was part of the common front, just like the CSN, the CSQ and the APTS, which together represented 420,000 workers in health and education.
Since these agreements were concluded, then ratified by the members, there has been an exchange of texts between the government and the union organizations – as is normally the case before the official signing of the agreements – in order to ensure that they These correspond well to what was agreed at the negotiating tables.
And this is where the problem lies, according to the CUPE and the SQEES, two large unions which represent thousands of beneficiary attendants.
“We have a lot of problems in the texts received at government level. There were several meetings held with the spokespersons to look at the texts and ask questions. Getting feedback was very difficult. But, in addition to that, it is that in the texts concluded in the agreement in principle, there were modifications on the employer’s side,” maintains Fanny Demontigny, president of the Provincial Council of Social Affairs at CUPE.
These unions distinguish several distortions with what had been agreed at the tables, according to them, notably affecting the payment of overtime at double rate, the deadline for payment of retroactivity, the start of the payment of new bonuses.
For payment at the double rate, for example, the change of a term in the text submitted by Quebec means that “we have several job titles which would no longer be entitled to this double rate. And it’s unacceptable,” illustrated Mme Demontigny.
Consequently, the FTQ will not sign these agreements if the texts remain as they are, she warns.
“There is no question of redoing the negotiations. We presented our members with an agreement in principle and it was democratically supported. We have validated more than once with the management side what today reveals a disagreement. We have discussions that bear witness to this. As a trade unionist, I have only one word, we believed that our counterparts, with the experience they have, had the same ethics,” said Sylvie Nelson, president of the SQEES.
CUPE and SQEES are considering filing a complaint for bad faith negotiation against the Quebec government if political pressure is not enough.
It ends at the CSN
The situation is not as gloomy on the CSN side, which says it is “on the verge of conclusion”.
Its Federation of Health and Social Services, for example, completed its exercise of reading and verifying the texts on Thursday evening before signing the conventions. She also represents thousands of healthcare workers, including beneficiary attendants.
“We are generally very close to an agreement on the texts of the other negotiating tables,” indicates the CSN. She plans to complete the exercise “in the coming days”.
The signing of these collective agreements is an important step for all the workers concerned, since they are waiting in particular for the payment of their retroactivity payment.
The Treasury Board had not yet commented at the time of writing.
