Negotiations between city, manual labourers to restart after six-day strike

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

Negotiations between the Ville de Québec and the union represent- ing manual labourers at city facilities have stalled, union leaders told reporters Friday.

The union went on a sched- uled short-term strike from July 10-15 – the second such strike in three weeks – leading to reduced hours at municipal swimming pools and delayed garbage pickup in some parts of the city. Negotiations were expected to resume July 16. Members of the Syndicat des employés manuels de la Ville de Québec, affiliated with the Syndicat canadien de la fonction publique (SCFP), are calling for more flexible schedules, more advance notice when employees’ work schedules change and a salary increase of about 19 per cent – commensurate with the 19.4 per cent increase over five years that their white-collar counterparts recently asked for and received.

The union and the city have been in negotiations since February 2023. In March of this year, 98 per cent of members voted to authorize pressure tactics up to and including a strike.

“Although recent meetings have allowed us to come closer on certain points, our two main issues remain, namely stability of working hours facilitating a real work-life balance as well as salary catch-up in order to achieve similar remuneration to that of other large cities in Quebec,” Luc Boissonneault, president of SCFP local 1638, said in a statement, noting that manual jobs at the city had a 33 per cent year-on-year turnover rate. “Our primary objective is to offer quality service to the citizens of Quebec City, but to do this, we need stability and retention of workers. This is the fight we are leading at the moment.” Boissonneault later told reporters that “everything is on the table” with regards to further strike action.

The union, which has about 1,400 members, is “open to continuing talks at the bar- gaining table with the aim of reaching a settlement as quickly as possible and thus avoiding having to drag out pressure tactics until winter, where the consequences on the population would be even more significant with the arrival of the first snows,” the statement said.