Nurses, government accept new collective agreement
Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
editor@qctonline.com
The Fédération inter- professionnelle de la santé de Québec (FIQ) has accepted a collective agreement proposed by a mediator, bringing an end to more than two years of negotiations with the provincial government.
Members of the FIQ, the province’s largest nurses’ union, voted in an online poll held Oct. 15-17 and briefly paused due to technical difficulties. About two-thirds – 66.3 per cent – of voting members chose to accept the agreement. Voter turnout was estimated at 75 per cent. The FIQ rep- resents about 80,000 nurses, nursing assistants, respiratory therapists and IV technicians in public-sector health facilities across the province.
The vote came six months after members rejected an initial proposed collective agreement by a similar margin. One of the major sticking points in the negotiations, union representatives said, was staff mobility – the idea that a nurse could be assigned, on short notice, to fill in at a facility far from her home or in a capacity that didn’t correspond with her experience (for example, an ER nurse being given a shift at a CHSLD).
“We’re not in celebration mode right now, we’re in ‘we got to the end of it’ mode,” FIQ vice-president Jérémie Rousseau told the QCT. “Two years is a very long time. There’s a huge difference of visions between the government and the health professionals [which creates] an issue with retention. I hope the government will take time to see what is going on on the ground.”
Rousseau noted that the union made some “important gains” in terms of holiday and overtime pay, and secured a 17.4 per cent pay raise over the next five years, identical to the raise public sector workers in the Front Commun union bloc received in their most recent collective agreement.
Nurses secured some concessions from the government around mobility – under nor- mal circumstances, a nurse can only be asked to fill in at a second facility if it’s less than 40 kilometres away from her primary facility and if she will be asked to provide the same kind of care. However, members also agreed to be part of voluntary “flying teams” sent as an occasional stopgap to understaffed facilities in remote regions.
“In addition to helping improve working conditions and providing increased flexibility, the agreement will enable government objectives to be achieved while improving the services offered in the public network,” Treasury Board president Sonia Lebel, Health Minister Christian Dubé, min- ister responsible for social services Lionel Carmant and minister for seniors’ affairs and associate health minister Sonia Bélanger said in a brief joint statement on Oct. 18.
The agreement will be in force until March 31, 2028.