FAE agreement in principle: Montreal union votes in favour, Laval union rejects

The Montreal Teachers’ Alliance, who are members of the largest union affiliated with the Fédération Autonome de l’enseignement (FAE), have accepted the agreement in principle from the Quebec government by 52 per cent.

However, the Syndicat de l’enseignement de la région de Laval (SERL) rejected the agreement with Quebec by 68 per cent.

This is the first member union of the FAE to speak out against the agreement.

The vote took place during the late hours of Thursday to early Friday morning – and took nearly nine hours.

In a brief press release, the Montreal Teachers’ Alliance did not reveal how many people voted in favour of the agreement – or the participation rate at the general assembly.

So far, three unions have voted on the agreement in principle.

The Syndicat de l’enseignement de la Pointe-de-l’Île (SEPÎ), in Montreal, voted on Wednesday evening 58.5 per cent in favour. This union represents 4,384 teachers at the Pointe-de-l’Île School Service Center, which is east of the city.

In a press release, the Teachers’ Alliance stated that the agreement will not “resolve all the problems in the education network.”

“If this is what we managed to obtain after a 22-day strike, I do not believe that we would have had more by repeating small pressure tactics after a refusal,” another teacher wrote.

The Teachers’ Alliance, nearly three-quarters of whose 9,731 members are women, includes teachers in public elementary and secondary schools, as well as in the adult education and vocational training centres of the Centre de services scolaires de Montréal (CSSDM).

The FAE has nine affiliated unions totaling around 66,000 teachers and five of the unions must vote in favour of the agreement for it to be accepted.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Jan. 19, 2024, and translated by CityNews.