Common Front unions draft proposal for agreement in principle with Quebec, FAE teachers’ union strikes tentative deal

A critical step has been reached in public sector negotiations: the inter-union Common Front announced Thursday that it had concluded a proposal for an agreement in principle on salaries and working conditions with Quebec at the central table.

The common front includes the CSN, the CSQ, the APTS and the FTQ and represents approximately 420,000 public sector workers. They will be presenting the offer to their delegates over the next few days.

Négos/table centrale:

Le gouvernement du Québec annonce avoir convenu d'une proposition d'entente de principe avec le Front commun.

Les détails de l'entente demeureront confidentiels jusqu'à ce que les membres des syndicats se soient prononcés sur son contenu. #polqc

— Sonia LeBel (@slebel19) December 28, 2023

Late Wednesday, the government also reached reached a tentative deal with a union representing about 40 per cent of the province’s teachers, who have been on unlimited strike since Nov. 23.

The Federation autonome de l’enseignement or FAE said Wednesday night that after 22 days of striking it is ready to present a deal to its leadership.

“If we have an offer on the table, I really hope that what that means is that they finally see our perspective,” said high school art teacher Marion Miller, part of the FAE union.

The government also reached tentative deals on working conditions with all the unions that are part of the Common Front representing about 420,000 public sector workers.

“It’s an important moment in the in this whole movement that’s been building over the past year,” Miller said. “I really hope that those are satisfactory deals that were bringing into the members and I hope that the members will look at those and say, ‘Wow that’s going to help me going forward in my work and that’s gonna show me that we value my work with fair pay.'”

Shortly after, Treasury Board Chair Sonia LeBel and Education Minister Bernard Drainville confirmed that the deal involved salaries and working conditions for the roughly 66,000 members of the union.

“That core issue of class composition, I hope that it’s been solved and I hope the government has moved on it because that’s all we are waiting for,” says Miller. “All of our other minor issues have kind of been dealt with and we’re just waiting for the CAQ to realize we have to lighten the load on teachers.”

The FAE took the most hard line out of all the public sector unions negotiating new contracts with the government, launching an unlimited general strike in November that shut about 800 schools.

“It’s been very difficult to be without pay for 22 days but I think that we felt that we were at such a breaking point that we had to do it,” Miller said.

“The FAE schools are the schools in urban settings so the context for teachers in Montreal is very different from in some of the regions of Quebec.

“Just the immigration profile of Montreal, the housing crisis in Montreal, the cost of inflation affecting families, like we’re really on the front lines of all of these burdens that are on families in Montreal and in Quebec city and in Laval and so I think it’s normal that we had to push harder to get some of those reinvestments for schools.”

Only the FIQ, the union representing about 80,000 health-care workers, still hasn’t reached a deal.

The FAE says if its leadership approves their deal, the agreement in principle will be presented to members in the new year.

Many are hoping for a settlement that would ensure school resumes with better working conditions for teachers and students on January 8.

“I think we shouldn’t go back to class without something that’s concrete,” said Miller.”We’ve got to make our lives better as teachers and it’s going to make students lives better as learners because we have to remember, the teachers teaching conditions are the learners learning conditions.”

Parents remain hopeful

Quebec parents group says its members are hopeful that hundreds of schools that have been shut will reopen as scheduled in January.

Sylvain Martel, spokesperson for parents group Regroupement des comites de parents autonomes du Quebec, said he was feeling hopeful but remaining cautious that 800 schools would reopen after the holiday break.

“We’re glad that we’re able to hope for going back to school on Jan. 9, but everything is tentative, lots of people have to agree to what’s on the table, so lets hope that it’s a real deal and (union) members will get what they want,” he said in an interview Thursday.

Even if everything goes well Martel said strike-affected students will have been out of class for nearly seven weeks.

“It’s very difficult for students to go back to the same rhythm they were in November, so it’s going to take a little while, but we’ll get there,” he said.