Quebec's elementary and high school teachers are calling it a very reasonable deal.
The unions representing 73,000 public education teachers in the province have reached an agreement in principle with the Quebec government, but the agreement is only covering over non-monetary issues.
The deal does not include the 34,000 teachers belonging to the Federation Autonome des Enseignants (FAE), the union that represents teachers with French-language school boards in and around Montreal, however that union announced Tuesday it was resuming negotiations with the provincial government.
The two sides had been negotiating for 14 months and the unions involved, the Federation des Syndicats de l'Enseignment and the Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers (QPAT) they were able to reach this agreement, in part, because of the support from parents.
Richard Goldfinch, president of QPAT, said classroom sizes and ratios have been maintained at the levels the teachers wanted, teachers are keeping their 32-hour work week, and work done outside the classroom is being recognized.
Even though this agreement doesn't touch salary issues the unions are calling it a success because they succeeded in getting the Couillard government to back down.
"We are protecting quality public education, public education that is funded publicly, properly, so that we can move forward in Quebec and continue to be a world-class public education system. We have backed down a situation that would have put us in a very precarious mode," said Goldfinch.
The unions say while the government backed down on all its demands the unions did make concessions in order to reach an agreement. but they didn't go into many details on those concessions.
The agreement still has to be approved in a vote by teachers.
Q-PAT represents 8,000 teachers in the English sector and the FSE represents 65,000 teachers in boards across the province.
