APTS vs. Santé Québec on premiums: the employers’ committee may intervene

The Employer Negotiation Committee will be able to intervene between Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux APTS union and Santé Québec, concerning late premiums paid to its members in health and social services.

The Administrative Labour Tribunal has just granted the request for intervention by the Employer Negotiation Committee for Health and Social Services. The committee will be able to intervene in the case, in addition to Santé Québec. It will therefore be able to plead, present witnesses, make objections, and cross-examine witnesses.

The Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux (APTS) opposed it, arguing that the management committee “is not an entity with a legal personality, but rather a simple committee responsible for implementing the mandates entrusted to it, without any will or autonomy of its own,” the Tribunal said.

But administrative judge Henrik Ellefsen decided otherwise. In his interlocutory decision on the employer’s committee’s request for intervention, he stated that “even if its name may be confusing,” the management negotiating committee “is not just a committee. It is a separate entity, created by law, which enjoys legal personality and autonomy to be a party to litigation before the Tribunal”.

The merits of the case concern an obstruction complaint filed by the APTS against Santé Québec because of the delay in the payment of bonuses owed to thousands of workers in health and social services: professionals, technologists and technicians.

These can be evening or night bonuses, bonuses for work in youth centres, in critical care, for working with clients with serious behavioural disorders.

The APTS signed its 2023-2028 collective agreement with the Government of Quebec on June 7, 2024. According to the deadline, the employer had to pay these bonuses within 120 days of the signing of the agreement, i.e. October 5, 2024. Some premiums have been paid since then, but not all or not entirely; this varies from one institution to another, says the APTS.

In its complaint, the Alliance alleges that Santé Québec is hindering its activities and violating freedom of association by not paying the premiums provided for in the collective agreement within the prescribed deadlines. This has the effect of making it lose credibility and weaken it in the face of its members, who criticize it, as if it were responsible for the situation, she argues.

Administrative judge Ellefsen has begun hearing the case and the hearing is expected to continue in the coming months.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews