No New Collective Agreement and No Progress in Negotiations
 
Collective agreements of approximately 550,000 public
sector workers in Quebec expired on March 31, 2020. Negotiations began
about a year ago but no new collective agreement has yet been
signed, and according to the unions, no agreement is in sight in the
near future unless the government begins to negotiate seriously to meet
the workers' pressing demands. Some Basic Facts
The workers involved in the negotiations include 58,500
in the public service, 260,000 in health and social services, 32,000
teachers and education workers in colleges, and 195,000 teachers and
education workers in elementary and high schools
Negotiations are conducted on a sectoral and
intersectoral basis. Sectoral negotiations cover working conditions and
work organization, union activities including union leave, work tasks,
scheduling, job postings, health and safety, the status of positions as
part-time, full-time, casual, etc. -- issues specific to that sector.
Intersectoral negotiations deal
with wages, pensions, group insurance plans, parental rights and
regional disparities and cover all the workers in all the sectors.
Intersectoral negotiations are conducted directly with
the Treasury Board Secretariat. Sectoral bargaining for the public
service is also with the Treasury Board Secretariat. Sectoral
negotiations for other sectors are held with employer committees
consisting of representatives of employer associations and ministerial
representatives. These
committees all receive their direction from the Treasury Board
Secretariat. For this round of negotiations, there
is no common front
of the unions. Each union conducts its own negotiations. However, the
Alliance of the Professional and Technical Health and Social Services
Staff (APTS) and the Interprofessional Health Care Federation of Quebec
(FIQ) have formed an alliance for intersectoral bargaining. The unions
have entered into a non-raiding agreement under which they commit,
during the negotiation period, not to encourage members of one union to
join another. Wages  The
government has, for one year now, maintained its wage offer of five per
cent over three years, plus additional fixed dollar increases for
certain
categories of work. This represents no more than a cost of living
increase and is in fact a wage freeze. All the unions have rejected the
government's wage offer and consider it an insult. Workers are
demanding
wage increases that make up for lost wages after decades of anti-social
austerity and to improve their living conditions, retain staff, and
attract employees.
According to a 2019 study by the Quebec
Statistical
Institute, workers in the public service, education, and health and
social services are lagging about 20 per cent behind other public
sector employees such as Hydro-Quebec workers, and about
18 per cent behind unionized workers in the private sector. In
these negotiations, the unions are taking different approaches to wage
increases. The APTS-FIQ alliance is demanding a
12.4 per cent
increase over three years, which includes 7.4 per cent in wage
catch-up. The Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN) has fixed
amount wage demands: $2 per hour in the first year, $0.75 in the
second year, $0.75 in the third year. In this way, it wants a catch-up
for low wage
earners. For someone earning $20 an hour, $3.50 over three years is
equivalent to a 17 per cent wage increase. In order
to
counter the misinformation spread by the
government about "highly paid" public sector workers, the Quebec
Federation of Labour (FTQ) has published statistics on the average
annual salary of
its 52,000 members in the public sector: average annual salary of
public sector
employees: $36,155.49; average annual salary of casual and temporary
public
sector
employees (other than regular): $28,490.15; percentage of women in the
sector: 73.7. Working conditions There
are several demands concerning working conditions
which cannot be dealt with in detail here. The general orientation is
this:
An Acceptable
Workload The workload is unsustainable, caused by
more than 30
years of budget cuts that have resulted in mass departures, absences
due to injury and illness, schedule changes, etc. Specific needs vary
from sector to sector: acceptable caregiver/patient ratios in
health care, for example; increased staffing; stable shifts with
well-defined tasks,
etc. Elimination
of Mandatory Overtime The
transformation of part-time positions into full-time positions and
respect for full-time positions. One is impossible
without the other. When full-time
positions, as is the case now, actually mean far more than full-time
hours due to mandatory overtime, and when full-time workers are denied
statutory and other negotiated leaves people do not apply for these
full-time jobs. Stable
work teams and an end to forcing workers to move from one health
establishment to another This is particularly
important in health care where
working at more than one facility during a pandemic is unsafe for
workers and patients and also affects the quality of care. Improving Health and Safety
The health sector has become the leading sector in
Quebec in terms of work-related accidents and illnesses contracted at
work. However, the health sector is not even considered a priority
sector by the Act respecting occupational health and safety which
means that the mechanisms provided by law for priority sectors, such as
joint health
and safety committees and prevention representatives, do not even exist
in the sector. Workers are demanding prevention measures over which
they have a decisive say. Among teachers, the
demands focus on reducing class
sizes so as to create conditions conducive to quality teaching and
learning. In the conditions of COVID-19, this demand has taken on a
particularly urgent character to ensure the safety of staff, students
and communities. Teachers also demand services for students based on
their needs, a
workload that is humane and sustainable, recognition of their
profession (especially through acceptable wages), and a reduction in
precarious work (for example part-time and casual work). Rejection
of Workers' Demands and Concessionary Demands
from Government and Employers While their demands
are just, favourable to their
members, to the services and to society, public sector workers are
facing
a blunt refusal from government and employer associations.
Workers report that after a year, government and
employer negotiators still show up at the bargaining tables saying they
do not have the mandate to address any of the workers' demands. They
cite the government's tight fiscal framework as a reason for refusing
to address union demands or for rejecting them outright. On working
conditions
they say that these can only be dealt with in joint committees once
the collective agreements are signed. Workers also
report that government and employer
representatives are coming to the tables with demands for concessions.
For example, while the government is publicly proclaiming that it wants
to put an end to staff movement between establishments within the
Integrated Health and Social Services Centres, a demand for increased
mobility is
being put forward at the tables. Government and
employers are also pushing the averaging
of hours of work over an extended period in order to avoid paying
overtime
rates. Instead of paying overtime if a worker works more than the
normal defined work week, they want to average hours over a longer
period with the result that workers could be forced to work twelve or
sixteen
hours in a day at regular rates. This theft would then be called a
"reduction in overtime." To date no progress has
been made and there is no new
collective agreement in sight. Time is running out and the situation is
urgent.
This article was published in
Number 73 - October 27, 2020
Article Link:
No New Collective Agreement and No Progress in Negotiations
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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