Montreal
Transit Workers Keeping Workers Informed and Mobilized to Ensure that Health Standards are Enforced -
Interview, Gleason
Frenette -
September
13, 2018. Montreal transit maintenance workers' rally during
negotiations for new collective agreement in which they repelled
employers' demands for concessions.
Gleason Frenette is the
President of
the Montreal Transit Union (STM-CSN). Workers'
Forum:
What is the situation at the Montreal Transit Corporation (STM) in
terms of cases of COVID-19 infection? Gleason
Frenette:
At the STM, we are at about 221 cases of infection since the beginning
of the pandemic. During the first wave, we had about 130 cases. There
have been close to 100 since the beginning of the second wave.
Approximately 60 per cent of the cases are drivers, 30 per cent are
maintenance employees and the
other 10 per cent are distributed among other sectors including
managers. There are about 10,500 employees at the STM, and more than
3,000 of them are teleworking. WF:
What
work is the union doing to mobilize workers in the fight to curb
COVID-19? GF:
We have
had to cancel our normal proceedings. Normally we hold a union council
or a general membership meeting every three weeks in person, but we
can't do that anymore. Now we hold our meetings on the Zoom platform,
virtually. We held a union council meeting in October and we are
holding a general membership
meeting on November 10. We follow the usual
processes, as if people were
present. We present reports on the situation and members vote on
resolutions. We have adjusted our services
accordingly. We have
gone to telework. All the office workers are teleworking at home. We
are very active from a communications point of view. We have encouraged
our members to join our private Facebook group. This has grown from
just over 1,000 participants at the beginning of the pandemic to over
1,900
participants now. Members sign up on the page and we check to make sure
the person applying is a member. We accept retirees too. In particular,
we inform them about the pension plan. Many ask questions about it,
about how investments will behave during the pandemic. They are also
concerned about whether the STM will maintain the
pensions. On our Facebook page, I provide regular
updates.
At the present time we have 76 updates posted. The updates inform
workers on all issues in the life of the union. Pandemic information is
important in these updates. We give regular reports on new cases that
have been reported, which sector they are in, and, if it is one of our
members, on
which shift the infected worker was working. The goal is to make the
members aware so that they can remain vigilant, especially when
multiple cases are added. Each time an update is
published on the Facebook
page, there may be a hundred comments and questions that we answer. We
answer all the questions, on all aspects -- the pension plan, union
life, the pandemic, all subjects. WF:
What is
the situation in terms of the health standards you've been fighting for
since the beginning?  GF:
It's
going rather well, but there's a snag. Normally, when there is an
accident at work, we participate in the investigations, there are joint
investigations. The STM, for workers who test positive for COVID-19,
conducts an investigation into each case. It should be the National
Public Health Institute of Quebec (INSPQ) that
does the investigation, but they don't have the resources so they have
delegated it to the STM. In our opinion, the STM is in a conflict of
interest situation because when a COVID investigation is done, if an
infected person has been in contact with others, all of them have to be
sent to quarantine. In our case, this is paid. We want the
investigation
to be joint, but the STM has never agreed, so we are in arbitration on
this matter. Normally we would participate in the investigations
because it affects the health and safety of workers, as if it were a
workplace accident.
We have made agreements with
the STM to add
resources for disinfection. Initially, this was an agreement to hire
students earlier than planned. Usually students are hired at the end of
June, but we agreed to hire them in May because the students were not
going to school. It was also agreed that workers in other union
certifications, office
workers, professionals, even engineers, would come in to help with
disinfection. After the first wave, when the students were going back
to school at the end of August, we made an agreement for a rapid and
massive hiring of staff to do the disinfection. The agreement was voted
on by the membership by email because it modified the collective
agreement and required membership approval. During
the first wave, we focused on health and
safety with our health and safety committee and the executive members
receiving information daily from the union in all sectors. We had to
put pressure on the employer because it wasn't working at the pace we
wanted. We used collective and individual work refusals to push the
employer to put
the measures in place. We put a lot of pressure on the employer to
ensure that safety measures were taken quickly. We made representations
to the Labour Standards, Pay Equity and Workplace Health and Safety
Board (CNESST) which agreed with us on several occasions, and to INSPQ
which also put pressure on the employer when it was
informed that the measures were not implemented quickly enough. We put
pressure through the mainstream media and on social media, and we
applied political pressure, particularly on the city of
Montréal, to push the STM to adopt the health measures
quickly. We are continuing this work during the
second
wave. Our strength is keeping our workers informed. That's how we
succeed in mobilizing them to take the necessary precautions and ensure
that health standards are applied. We have to keep them informed of
everything that is happening because we are having fewer meetings than
we do
usually. Regular updates are needed. Workers are aware of what is
happening. They are not afraid to go to the employer to demand that
measures be put in place because they feel supported and they know
their rights, such as the right to refuse unsafe work. We inform them
of the proper procedures to follow so that they are not subject to
disciplinary measures. All of this is very much appreciated by the
members. They find that they have even more information than usual and
they actually participate more.
This article was published in
Number 77 - November 12, 2020
Article Link:
Montreal
Transit Workers: Keeping Workers Informed and Mobilized to Ensure that Health Standards are Enforced -
Interview, Gleason
Frenette
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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