(Montreal) Starting Monday and continuing for five weeks, the approximately 420,000 workers represented by common front unions in the public sector are being asked to vote on the agreement in principle reached to renew their collective agreements.
Published at 12:20 p.m.
Lia Lévesque The Canadian Press
Meetings could take place until February 19, depending on the union, whether affiliated with the CSQ, APTS, FTQ or CSN. Employees then have the opportunity to obtain full details and ask their representatives questions before making a decision.
A few days ago, FTQ President Magali Picard said she was “very satisfied and very proud of what was negotiated by the common front.”
The president of the CSQ, Éric Gingras, was optimistic. “I have confidence in the members who will read best. We think we will present something interesting. »
In an interview, the president of the Federation of Education Unions (FSE), Josée Scalabrini, admits that “the members are very interested in having these agreements presented to them.” She also assumes that it will be in the next three weeks there will be several meetings.
The FSE, which is affiliated with the CSQ and thus part of the common front, only had to strike for eight days, in November and December, before reaching a proposed agreement, while the independent Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE) had to pause Do the work for more than a month to achieve the same result.
Despite everything, Ms Scalabrini refuses to blame the FAE for its strategy.
“I will never allow myself to evaluate another organization's strategy. But I think that the strategy we chose, from what our members have said and from what I've heard so far, was the right strategy: working with all public sector employees, that's what got us to where we are with a coordinated strike sequences. »
The content
The agreement in principle reached by the Common Front on December 28 calls for increases of at least 17.4% over five years.
More specifically, we are talking about an increase of 6% from April 1, 2023, 2.8% on April 1, 2024, 2.6% on April 1, 2025, 2.5% on April 1, 2026 and then 3, 5% on April 1, 2027. in addition to an inflation protection clause for the last three tariff years.
It also provides for improvements to holiday and group insurance.
At the sectoral level, several health unions have already disclosed the content of their agreement even before rank-and-file members find out about it at meetings.
For example, health care unions have received bonus bonuses and overtime and are also better able to participate in scheduling management.