Two unions rejected on Thursday evening the agreement in principle reached between the Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE) and the Quebec government. Several teachers announced the results of the votes on Facebook late in the evening. So far, the deal has drawn both support and opposition from unions.
Updated at 12:21 a.m.
The Lordships Education Union rejected the agreement in principle with Quebec by 58%. The agreement was presented to the union's 705 teachers at a meeting on Thursday evening.
A few minutes later, the 6,400 teachers of the Quebec Region Education Union also rejected the agreement by a majority of 60%.
Four out of nine unions have now spoken out against the agreement (four supported it). Last week, the Laval Region Teachers' Union and the Basses-Laurentides Teachers' Union also rejected the offer, with 68% and 72% respectively.
The vote was heartbreaking for many teachers. At the Alliance of Professors of Montreal, the largest union affiliated with the FAE, the agreement was approved by 52% in the middle of the night last week after more than eight hours of meeting.
The Syndicat de l'enseignement de l'Ouest de Montréal (SEOM) disagreed on the agreement and voted in favor of the agreement with a majority of 51%, with only 76 votes resulting from the difference between the two camps.
Only one FAE union has not yet voted, namely the Haute-Yamaska Education Union (SEHY), which will vote on January 31st. Last week, the union's executive board recommended its members reject the agreement in principle reached with Quebec because of the government's “blatant disregard” for teachers.
The president of this union, Sophie Veilleux, did not want to comment on this decision “until the members have spoken”. However, the union wrote in its email that it believes the tentative agreement “does not provide a significant improvement.” [les] Working conditions, including class composition.
Will the agreement be accepted?
Given the support and opposition from unions, it remains unclear whether the agreement will be accepted in principle by the FAE.
It is generally agreed that ratification requires a double majority, ie 50% of the votes and 50% of the affiliated unions. In fact, the process is more complex.
To be ratified, the agreement must receive a majority of “union units” and a majority of “mandates.”
First, six “union units” are assigned to each of the nine unions. Each union is free to divide them as they see fit, for example by school service centers if the union represents more than one. These votes are therefore not automatically counted towards the election that won at the meeting.
Each union is then assigned “mandates” based on the number of members. For each union, votes are automatically allocated to the option that won at the meeting.
The population has to be patient until they find out the outcome of the vote. Since the distribution of these units and mandates is not known to the public, it will not be possible to know whether the agreement will be ratified before February 7, when the FAE will announce the result.
The FAE has nine affiliated unions representing 66,000 teachers. They staged a 22-day strike late last year as part of negotiations to renew their collective agreement.
With Marie-Eve Morasse, La Presse