(Montreal) In the midst of public sector strike votes, the trend is confirmed: Common Front union members strongly support an indefinite strike mandate.
Posted at 2:17 p.m.
Lia Lévesque The Canadian Press
In some unions the vote is even unanimous in favor of the strike order.
The four unions that form the common front, namely the APTS, the CSN, the FTQ and the CSQ, are demanding from their 420,000 members a mandate for a general and indefinite strike, which would be preceded by isolated or group strike days.
The four joint front organizations will hold general meetings of their member unions from September 18th to October 13th; So we’re halfway there.
CSQ
At the CSQ, which represents the majority of primary and secondary school teachers in Quebec as well as education professionals and support staff at the university level, around fifty unions have so far held their meeting.
Support for the strike mandate is generally over 90%, in many cases over 95%.
In Outaouais, three of the four units of educational professionals – for example, speech therapists and psychoeducators – voted 100% in favor of the strike and the other unit voted 98.5%. School staff in Rivière-du-Loup have the lowest support rate at 83%.
“When we say that employee expectations are high, the available results confirm what we hear from practice. They tell themselves that this is really the case and they massively support the strategy proposed to them,” commented the president of the CSQ, Éric Gingras.
CSN
Around fifty meetings have been held so far in the CSN, which particularly represents thousands of beneficiaries as well as support staff in the health and education networks. Support for the strike mandate there averaged 92.6%.
“We haven’t seen such high numbers and such high participation for a long time.” This is certainly symptomatic of the state of mind of our members. You have nothing to lose; They are angry and want to go all the way,” commented the vice-president of the CSN, François Énault, in charge of public sector negotiations at this union center.
APTS
On the side of the Alliance of Professional and Technical Personnel in Health and Social Services (APTS), whose members work in health facilities and for social services – for example physiotherapists, psychoeducators, radiation oncology technologists, medical technologists, nutritionists – the support is just as strong.
In Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean: 97% support; on the north coast: 97.9%; in Abitibi-Témiscamingue: 89.3%; in the Côte-Nord laboratories: 100%; Abitibi-Témiscamingue Laboratories: 96.4%.
“These are very strict strike mandates that our members have given us; This may not be a surprise, but an average of 96.7% stimulates the imagination. “What I see on the ground every day, what our locally elected people at APTS have been seeing for months, is that staff are fed up,” commented the APTS president. APTS, Robert Comeau.
FTQ
On the FTQ side, which in particular also represents thousands of beneficiary companions and support staff in the health and education sectors, around a quarter of the local sections had held their meeting. “The vote is over 95%,” it said. The health sector will mainly hold its meetings from next week
“This 95% and above clearly shows the anger of our members in the face of the government’s insulting and arrogant offers of 9% over five years.” Billions of dollars in subsidies are currently flowing into Quebec under the pretext of creating exciting and paying jobs to Prime Minister Legault quote. Well, the jobs in our world are exciting, but not rewarding and above all not stimulating,” commented the President of the FTQ, Magali Picard.