|
The Fight in Quebec for Acceptable Working Conditions in Health Care Paramedics Demand Government Respect Commitments Made During Last NegotiationsWorkers' Forum is posting below an interview with Jean Gagnon, who is the Representative of the Pre-Hospital Sector of the Health and Social Services' Federation (FSSS-CSN). The federation represents approximately 3,500 of the 5,000 paramedics across Quebec. After a protracted strike, these paramedics signed a collective agreement in 2017 in which the government of the day made specific binding commitments. Workers' Forum: The FSSS-CSN recently
published the
communiqué "Pre-hospital emergency services: the government must
respect its commitments." What is the non-respect of the Quebec
government's commitments to paramedics and the public? Jean Gagnon: When we renewed our collective agreements in 2017, we had demands regarding the workload of the paramedics that work on hourly schedules and the transformation of around-the-clock on-call schedules into hourly schedules. These on-call schedules force paramedics to be available 24 hours a day for seven days. The government sent us a letter announcing these measures and the criteria with which it was monitoring the workforce year after year. When thresholds were reached, the government was to convert the on-call schedules into hourly schedules and to add more workers in the case of the hourly schedules. These thresholds are based on measuring the time spent answering calls for ambulances, and beyond a certain threshold, the on-call schedule becomes untenable. It becomes untenable because the paramedics stay at work far too long. We are forced to remove them from the road and replace them with another team. But if they were on 12-hour schedules, they would finish their shift, perhaps a little late sometimes, but another team would take over. In other places, we are not able to answer the calls in the time that is required so vehicles must be added.
The fact is that since 2017, they have not provided us with any data other than what we used last time we were in negotiations. So the data we have are from 2015-16. We do not have data for 2016-17 and 2017-18. Yet we know that in many places we meet the criteria for adding vehicles and changing these around-the-clock on-call schedules. At the moment, the areas for which we want official data, the areas for which we know that the thresholds have been reached with respect to the on-call schedules, are Farnham, Cabano, Baie-Saint-Paul, La Malbaie, Amos, Malartic, Ville-Marie, La Tuque, Coaticook and Weedon. In regards to workloads for those working on hourly schedules, we have Quebec City, the Laurentides-Lanaudière region, Montérégie and Sherbrooke. In addition, with respect to Urgences-santé [the public emergency medical service for Montreal and Laval -- WF Ed. Note], there were 77,000 hours of service time put in, the equivalent of 70 full-time positions, and at the moment there are about 15 positions that have been created, with people put on the road. We know that when the workload is too high, paramedics face post-traumatic stress, burnout, problems retaining workers in the profession and all the problems that result from this. For the cities I just named, we do have our people collecting data, we can get data from the employer, we can see the hours our teams do, and we know the places where, in our opinion, the thresholds have been reached. It is up to the government to provide us with the official data. WF: What work are paramedics and the union doing to force the government to honour its commitments? JG: Right now, we are in the process of denouncing the situation and of course we are giving the government the opportunity to hear us and respect its commitments, otherwise other things will be organized. We do not see how we can start new negotiations if the government does not respect its commitments from the last round. You will hear from us again in the coming months, for sure, until the government respects its commitments. We signed these collective agreements with employers, under the auspices of the Liberal government of the day, and the Ministry of Health committed to providing us with the data for each year and to implement the criteria. Today we are addressing ourselves to the Coalition Avenir Québec government and we are asking how we are going to be able to operate if, when there is a change of party in power, it does not respect the agreements that were reached in good faith. We must not forget that if we did not have these commitments in writing, there would not have been a collective agreement, we would still be in a dispute and on strike. That is what settled the dispute and the strike. Although this commitment is not part of the labour contract per se, it is still a written commitment from the Ministry that we have in our hands. We are asking people to support us, to call the
Ministry if they
can to denounce the situation. Most importantly, if they face undue
wait-times, we are asking them to file a complaint. To contact the Quebec
Ministry of Health and Social Services regarding the unacceptable
situation facing the paramedics and the people who require their
services, call: 1-877-644-4545 (toll free line). (Photo: CSN)
This article was published in   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
