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Interview Concerns for Preparedness for Second Wave of COVID-19Jeff Begley is President of the Federation of Health and Social Services (FSSS-CSN). Workers' Forum: What are your main concerns at the FSSS-CSN at this time? Jeff Begley: Our two main concerns right now are the state of preparedness for a possible second wave of COVID-19 and the negotiations between the public sector unions and the Quebec government. If there is any preparation for a second wave being done by the government right now, we are not part of it. Whatever the government is doing in Quebec it is with a small group. It is not working with the unions. We don't know what it is doing.
The question of personnel going back and forth between areas where where there are many COVID-19 patients to those where there are none, is an important issue. At the moment, there is no outbreak, and if there is a second wave we will probably have enough orderlies on hand, with the new recruits coming in, so that orderlies will not have to go back and forth. But what about the other types of jobs, the maintenance workers, for example, for which there has been no hiring? COVID-19 may very well infect these workers. We don't see the plan to make sure that in these types of jobs there is not going to be back-and-forth. There is no transparency in what the government is doing. I suspect that most employers receive information in dribs and drabs. Our members have been on the ground throughout this first wave. They have things to propose to improve the situation. We have asked for meetings at all levels to discuss the situation. We are not being listened to. We need meetings at the Quebec-wide and local levels. Not everything requires a solution at the Quebec-wide level. Of course, some things, like the issue of personal protective equipment, have to be dealt with at the Quebec-wide level. But when it comes to the deployment of personnel, a lot can be worked out at the local level. Our impression is that not only the union but the employers have been left out. As a result, workers have no assurances and they are worried. All they are being told is that we will be ready for a second wave. Throughout the first wave we have seen how disconnected the public discourse is from what has been happening on the ground. The government is good at public relations, but in direct relations with the people who do the work, it's a different story. WF: What is new with regard to public sector negotiations? JB: It's not going well. Again, what the government is saying in the media does not match what is happening at the negotiating table. Because of the urgency of the situation, it is not possible this time to put forward a settlement that is not entirely satisfactory. It seems that the government is playing the card of trying to find some weak link, whoever it may be, that will accept a settlement that is less than satisfactory. The government should not try to divide and rule. It should start negotiating to reach a settlement that satisfies us, and, above all, makes serious improvements to the public health and social services network.
In addition, there is the question of undoing the effects of Bill 10 which was brought in by the previous Liberal government and its Health Minister Gaétan Barrette. Bill 10 centralized all the powers of the network in the hands of the Minister and, in particular, removed staff members and citizens from any participation in decision making. We also have demands regarding working conditions and a lot of health and safety demands. We are asking for an improvement in work organization, which includes the hiring of more staff, including the maintenance staff that I mentioned earlier. We are also facing a situation where many employers -- not all, but many -- are pressuring people who are on sick leave or people who have been injured on the job to return to work before they have fully recovered. This does not make sense from a human point of view, and it also costs the health care system a lot more in the long run when workers come back to work too soon. The main issue in all of this is prevention. Prevention in the workplace must be improved to make sure injuries and illnesses don't happen. As far as the FSSS-CSN is concerned, we are very far from an agreement. The government should concentrate less on public relations and more on negotiating seriously with us. This fall is going to be very intense. We must fight for our members and for the entire health and social services network. (Translated from original French by Workers' Forum)
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We lived through the first wave. We lived through the failure to
provide personal protective equipment. Are we going to have the N95
mask in the residential and long-term care centres when there is an outbreak? We don't have an answer
to that. We know we must have them but it is far from certain that we
will.
We must resolutely move forward on the wage issue. As we have
already discussed, for this round of negotiations the CSN has put
forward fixed amount wage demands: $2.00 per hour in the first year --
$0.75 in the second year, $0.75 in the third year. The reason we have
put forward fixed amounts is to narrow the wage gap. If you earn $20
per hour, $3.50 over three years equals a 17 per cent wage increase. If
you earn $60 an hour, the increase is about six per cent. This would be a
real wage catch-up for low wage earners.