3-day strike underway in 400 Quebec CPEs

Workers at 400 childcare centers (CPEs) have once again walked off the job — this time for three days.

This is their their sixth, seventh, and eighth days of strike action, as their first strike mandate was five days long and they have now used it up. They are now beginning their new strike mandate, which could theoretically extend to a general and unlimited strike.

These workers are members of unions in the Fédération de la santé et des services sociaux (FSSS), which is affiliated with the CSN.

In addition to walking out for three days, they will demonstrate in front of the National Assembly on Thursday in Quebec City.

“We felt these three days were necessary. We don’t see any appetite from the management to land. In fact, we don’t see a common landing strip.” “For now, our positions are still very far apart,” said Stéphanie Vachon, representative of the childcare sector at the FSSS, in an interview Tuesday.

The dispute concerns wages, workload, bonuses for workers in the regions, and assistance for children with special needs.

The FSSS is the only organization that has still not reached a settlement with Quebec, since the other three, affiliated with the CSQ and the FTQ, renewed their agreement several months ago. And their members have even ratified it. However, the FSSS represents the largest number of these workers in childcare centres and still considers Quebec’s offers insufficient.

However, the President of the Treasury Board, Sonia LeBel, announced two weeks ago that she would not deviate from the negotiation framework established with the CSQ federation and the FTQ unions, which have already settled.

“The framework established during this round of negotiations will not be called into question: it’s a matter of fairness to all the other unions that have already reached agreements,” the Minister commented on X.

Vachon replied that “what was reached with the other unions before the holidays belongs to the other unions. They made their own choices; they chose to make concessions based on their own realities.”

Vachon confirmed, however, that on March 12, she received from Quebec City the offer of 17.4 per cent wage increases over five years that all government employees and other union organizations representing childcare workers had obtained.

“It’s not that 17.4 per cent isn’t attractive, but there’s still a resulting gap that will remain with the public sector. That’s still bothering us,” the union leader commented.

She also confirms that in the offer received by the FSSS, the starting salary level for a qualified educator in a daycare center would increase from $21.60 per hour to $25.15, as in the offer accepted by the other unions.

The FSSS members were not asked to vote on the agreement reached by the other CSQ and FTQ unions, Ms. Vachon concedes. “They did not vote on the texts; however, at the general meeting, we presented the exact offer that had been submitted to us on March 12; we presented our demands that were still on the table and remained unanswered; we presented where we were, exactly, in the negotiations,” she reports.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews