Nurses union rejects latest offer from provincial government, announces pressure tactics

Nurses union rejects latest offer from provincial government, announces pressure tactics

Earlier today (August 30) the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ), the union representing roughly 80,000 nurses and health care professionals across the province, announced that they are turning up the pressure on the provincial government.

After more than 500 days without an agreement, Treasury Board President Sonia Lebel put forward the government’s latest proposal on Thursday, August 29. After examining the proposal, the FIQ’s negotiating committee unanimously rejected the new offer and encouraged their members to start refusing overtime hours starting September 19. Mandatory overtime has long been a point of contention among nurses.

As reported in Le Droit, the FIQ implemented this tactic back in 2019 in response to mandatory overtime, and were told by Quebec’s Administrative Tribunal for Labour that they must “unconditionally accept all requests for mandatory overtime in urgent and exceptional situations, as in normal times.” However, the tribunal also noted that employers had to do everything possible to avoid the implementation of mandatory overtime.

In a French-language interview with CHIP 101.9, the FIQ’s Outaouais representative Karine D’Auteuil explained why this new proposal has provoked such indignation from members.

One of the points that the FIQ has opposed since the last proposal was rejected in March, is the government’s request to be able to transfer nurses from one care facility to another. In the last offer, the government had assured that it would never move a nurse more than 30 km from their main place of work. However D’Auteuil explained, in the new offer the government retained the right to move its nursing staff over an unlimited distance.

Due to this “enormous lack of respect on the part of the government,” the FIQ decided to organize several pressure tactics and encouraged its member to refuse overtime starting September 19. Given that nurses are an essential service, the FIQ has decided not to launch an unlimited strike at this point, but D’Auteuil said that this remains a possibility.