UQAM lecturers' strike suspended amid settlement proposal

UQAM (Universite de Quebec a Montreal). (Daniel J. Rowe/CTV News)

A strike by lecturers at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) that was scheduled to begin Monday has been suspended.

The Syndicat des professeurs enseignants de l'UQAM, which represents the lecturers, says that negotiations continued throughout the night until 5:20 a.m. Monday.

By the end of talks, the conciliator from the Ministry of Labour, who accompanied the two parties, submitted a settlement proposal.

The union's negotiating and executive committees will now present this hypothesis to its members at a special general meeting to be held in the next few days.

Three weeks ago, members of the Syndicat des professeurs enseignants de l'UQAM voted 90 per cent in favour of an unlimited general strike after 29 negotiation sessions spread over more than a year.

The union deplored the fact that management seemingly wanted to impose setbacks to the current collective agreement when it came to probation, reducing employment contracts and lost qualifications for courses not taught after five years.

One of the key demands of the CSN-affiliated union was to stabilize the jobs of its approximately 2,500 members.

Lecturers are on 15-week contracts with no job security, yet they teach more than 60 per cent of undergraduate courses, according to the union.

It says it also hopes to change the designation from lecturers to teaching professors, hence the union's new name.

When it was founded in 1978, the name was Syndicat des chargés de cours de l'UQAM.

-- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on April 11, 2022.