Western Quebec Teachers' Association:
Teacher agreement preserved
Despite its rejection by health system employees, the Fédération de la santé et des services sociaux (FSSS-CSN), the tentative agreement with the provincial government and the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ) still stands, specifically for teachers.
“Even if the FSSS-CSN continues to negotiate, it does not prevent other unions from signing.
The agreement with the Common Front still stands,” explained Maxime Clément, with the Secrétariat intersyndical des services publics (SISP).
“Currently, negotiators and bureaucrats are working on the final draft. There are always things to iron out. The agreement will be signed in the coming weeks,” continued Clément.
The SISP represents three unions, including the CSQ, which saw 80% of its members voting for the agreement in January and February.
The CSQ represents the Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers (QPAT), whose members ratified the agreement. QPAT covers ten local teacher unions, including the Western Quebec Teachers' Association (WQTA), which represents over 400 teachers in 14 schools of the Western Quebec School Board (WQSB).
“It is not the greatest agreement, but we managed to protect much of our own and in that I’m happy,” said Richard Goldfinch, QPAT president. “So much was under attack; we managed to back them down on a lot. We can hold our heads up and say ‘no, you didn’t get to do what you wanted to do to us’.”
According to Goldfinch, protecting working conditions and salaries was crucial. “It’s all part of a puzzle. If you undo one thing, you create a situation in another. We were told ‘you will need to choose one over the other’ but we said we wouldn’t. We wanted to safeguard all parts of the puzzle. We would have liked to improve them, but that we were able to safeguard them is our victory.”
Key agreements
Among the conditions protected, teachers were able to keep their 32-hour work week on school grounds, class-size ratios, and funding for support for students with disabilities.
On intersectorial matters, which include all the money items, teacher salaries will increase by 9% over five years, instead of the 3% initially offered by the government.
“We successfully countered the countless, unreasonable concessions demanded by the government, and we preserved gains made in previous negotiations. We also secured gains by forcing the chair of the Conseil du trésor to depart from the rigid financial framework that he clung to right up until the end. That was no small feat,” noted Louise Chabot, CSQ president.
