(Montreal) Treasury Board President Sonia LeBel is now presenting her public sector “discussion forums” as genuine “bargaining tables” with unions, a “place next to” other tables.
Posted 10:46am Updated 11:52am
Lia Levesque The Canadian Press
In an interview with 98.5 FM host Paul Arcand on Monday, the minister denied she wanted to drown the public sector negotiations in a larger whole, with its three discussion forums being held in parallel with the actual negotiations. The unions refuse to participate.
These three forums — “classroom team,” “psychiatric team,” and “care team” — are real “bargaining tables,” just like the other bargaining tables the unions participate in, he added, she argued. She even presented these forums as “an additional central table”.
Public sector unions refused to participate in these discussion forums in 2020 and they refused this time as well. However, in 2020 they had managed to renew the collective agreements for the period 2020-2023 without attending these forums.
Unions see these forums as an opportunity to drown the fish, to engage in endless discussions when the problems are already known. From their point of view, it is high time to negotiate clauses in collective agreements to solve these problems.
But Secretary LeBel insists: “It’s a venue; we need to understand each other. We create a place next door. You can call it an extra table in the middle,” she claimed.
Around these huge forums, she wants to bring together all the unions concerned by a given issue, even if they have different demands regarding their collective agreement and different solutions to the problems raised.
I won’t have two ways to do it. You have to get along.
Sonia LeBel, President of the Treasury Board, on the microphone of 98.5
Nursing staff, for example, is mainly represented by the FIQ, but also by the CSQ, the CSN and the FTQ.
For example, in education, the CSQ represents both primary and secondary school teachers, support staff and professionals, while the FAE represents only teachers. The vision and priorities of unions are therefore not always the same.
It should be noted that these discussion forums represent “an additional central table”, “a place next to” the negotiating tables, while the minister herself regrets that there are already 20 negotiating tables in the health sector.
Collective bargaining agreements for around 600,000 state employees expire on March 31.
So far, the pace of negotiations has been rather slow, complain the Interprofessional Health Association (FIQ) and the common front, which includes the CSQ, FTQ, CSN and APTS.
Quebec blames unions for refusing to change practices by attending its forums in parallel. And the unions blame the Quebec government for trying to save time and drown the fish with its forums.