The presidents of the FTQ and the CSQ fear that Quebec unions will soon live the same treatment as Air Canada on -board agents, with the law that the Minister of Labor has just adopted, Jean Boulet.
The Quebec law, adopted last May, limits the effects of a strike or a lockout. Among other things, it gives the Minister of Labor the power to impose arbitration on the parties, “if he believes that a strike or a lock-out causes or threatens to cause serious or irreparable damage to the population”.
And the new Quebec law specifies that “such a decision of the Minister puts an end to the strike or the ongoing lockout”.
Both Magali Picard, president of the FTQ, and Eric Gingras, president of the CSQ, thus parallel with the arbitration imposed on unionized on -board agents at the Air Canada SCFP by the Federal Minister of Employment, Patty Hajdu.
“The intervention of the federalum, through article 107 of the Canadian Labor Code, is a scenario that is repeating itself and becoming the standard in the employers’ negotiation strategies. We let the negotiations rot and after, we will cry on the shoulder of governments, asking them to intervene under false pretexts, ”denounced Mr.me Picard.
“I predict you that this is also what will happen in Quebec, following the adoption by the CAQ and the government of François Legault of Bill 89, which limits the right to strike,” added the president of the Federation of Workers of Quebec.
The Canadian Public Service Syndicate (SCFP), which represents Air Canada ons in the country, is precisely affiliated with the FTQ in Quebec.
The CSQ too
During his traditional start to school press conference on Monday in Montreal, the president of the CSQ, Éric Gingras, spontaneously offered his support for Air Canada on -board agents.
They “live exactly, with the imposition of article 107, which the unions of Quebec could live” with the new Quebec law, namely “an employer who drags his feet, who crosses his arms in negotia, and who waits for the government to intervene”.
The union centers have already expressed their desire to possibly contest the new Quebec law before the courts, notably invoking the Saskatchewan judgment, rendered by the Supreme Court of Canada in January 2015, which had granted constitutional protection to the right to strike.
The new law of Minister Boulet, entitled Law to consider the needs of the population more in the event of a strike or lockoutwill come into force on November 30.
In addition to the Minister’s power to impose arbitration on the parties, to determine the working conditions of employees, the new Quebec law introduces a new concept, that of “minimally required services”, in addition to those which were already provided for in the Quebec Labor Code, namely essential services.
These are then “minimally required services to prevent disproportionate social security, economic or environmental security of the population, especially that of people in vulnerability”, it is said in the new law.