The common front of Quebec public sector unions is demanding wage increases above inflation, from two to four per cent over three years, in addition to the equivalent of the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
The common front, which is made up of the CSQ, CSN, FTQ and APTS, presented its demands to the Treasury Board on Friday morning in Quebec City as part of the process to renew the collective agreements in the public and parapublic sectors.
These agreements will expire on March 31.
However, for the first year, 2023, the Common Front is asking for an increase equivalent to the CPI plus 2 per cent or an increase of $100 per week -- whichever is more advantageous for the employee.
The Common Front also wants to make this mechanism linked to the Consumer Price Index permanent in order to avoid the loss of purchasing power of government workers.
Thus, every year on April 1, each rate in each scale would be indexed.
To justify its demands, the Common Front argues that the health and education networks are experiencing problems in recruiting and even retaining staff and that working conditions must therefore be improved.
"Our working conditions and our salaries are no longer tenable," said CSN vice-president François Énault, at a demonstration held to support the union's demands.
QFL President Daniel Boyer referred to the many thanks Premier François Legault gave to government workers at the height of the COVDI-19 pandemic.
"Were they obligatory thanks? Were they temporary thanks? Mr. Legault, we hope that your thanks were sincere. If your thanks were sincere, it will show at the negotiating table. And that's what we want," said Boyer, to loud applause from the crowd of protesters.
Alongside him, CSQ president Éric Gingras criticized the fact that government employees are always told that this is not the time to ask for so much in the name of the state of public finances or inflation or the management of the pandemic.
"The past has shown us that when the state had money, it did not have money for us, but for redistribution. When there was inflation, they didn't give us too many increases because it wasn't good for inflation. And when there was a recession, they shouldn't have given us (money) because there wasn't any. No, that's enough," said Gingras.
"I hope that François Legault and Sonia LeBel are listening today because we have come to deliver a clear message, a powerful message: we, with one voice, the 420,000 workers of the common front, will fight, as long as it takes, for the future of our public networks," said APTS president Robert Comeau.
The Quebec government will, in turn, table its offers to public employees by the end of the year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Oct. 28, 2022.
