translated from Alterative Socialiste, Québec
The Québec government and various unions have engaged during the last week in accelerated negotiations to renew the contracts of public and para-public sector employees. The COVID-19 health crisis gives health sector unions increased leverage, which was hard to imagine only six months ago. Let’s use this strength to make some gains, not only for health sector employees but also for the health of the general public!
The coronavirus pandemic has intensified the state of crisis of our public services and their workers, especially in the health sector. Of the 550,000 workers in the current public and para-public sector negotiations, nearly half are in health care. Sensing rising anger, the Legault government wants to rapidly conclude negotiations and avoid the anger of the most combative layer of the Québec working class.
The Québec health-care system was already weakened before the pandemic. Access to free quality health care was compromised by the shortage of workers, chronic underfunding and privatizations. The coronavirus has only made this problem worse, and this is only the start of the crisis.
The number of COVID-19 cases in the province of Québec is still rising rapidly. The front lines of the health-care system are in a very precarious position. Contrary to what economic pundits are prophesizing, this world recession and the massive job losses in Québec and Canada will not allow for a quick recovery. Rather, workers are faced with the threat of diminished buying power and unemployment.
There’s no going back
We cannot simply wait for the end of the COVID-19 crisis to take up again negotiations and demonstrations as before. Working relations may never go back to what they were before the crisis. Governments the world over are already giving away billions of dollars to private companies to help them “help” workers. These handouts to corporations come with no jobs or working condition guarantees. In fact, we are witnessing massive layoffs and even salary cuts in the communications and cultural sectors, and no economic or political player will take the initiative to fight for a massive investment in the health-care sector.
Calling for true solidarity with our “guardian angels”[1]
The coronavirus crisis affects state employees differently depending on their work sector. It is understandable that teachers’ unions, and unions of civil servants able to work from home, do not feel the same urgency of the situation on the ground and would rather delay negotiations. Even in the professional health-care sector, the hurried negotiations are seen with some fear. For the relatively better paid people, while salary is an important issue, working conditions are even more critical. Composed mostly of women, these professions are deeply affected by a lack of personnel which causes overtime, injuries, psychological distress, exhaustion, etc.
As for low-paid workers, these same difficult working conditions are worsened by low salary: the personnel retention rate is even lower. This creates dangerous situations where not enough workers are on hand to get the job done safely and properly, even in normal times.
This explains how salaries and working conditions are interrelated. One has an impact on the other. Raising salaries in some employee categories will have impacts on the working conditions of others as well. Even with the best agreements on working conditions, if those are not respected by employers, the problem will remain, and complaints will pile up. To solve the problem of work conditions, radical political decisions are needed. It is necessary to fight for massive reinvestment and for the nationalization of all private companies related to health care (clinics, pharmaceutical companies, recruiting companies, medical suppliers, etc).
Restrictions on pressure tactics and negotiations blitz
With the sanitary emergency decrees, it is now forbidden for health-care unions to use any pressure tactics other than through social media. Numerous sections of their collective bargaining agreements have been suspended.
Nonetheless, the current situation has already made the government backpedal on the negotiations. As of this writing, employers have proposed a salary increase of 2.2% the first year and indexing salary to the cost of living for future years. This proposal, which might look modest, is already higher than the result of an agreement between the state and the united front in 2015. At the time, only the Health and Social Services Federation (FSSS-CSN) obtained a stronger contract by continuing the fight on its own.
If some large unions are currently participating in these hurried negotiations, a fair number of unions are also asking to suspend the negotiations for 18 months. These unions see an improvement in working conditions as critical, not to be sidelined by the issue of salaries. They would rather build a stronger movement for later. This might seem like a good idea in theory, however, pushing back negotiations does not guarantee better leverage. What is certain is that the health-care system will be in a much worse state in 18 months, and other public sectors such as education will not be better off either. Also, the worsening of the situation will not necessarily imply greater solidarity among unions.
For the lowest paid workers at the front lines of this epidemic, now is the time to fight for and win historic gains!
Accept nothing below initial demands!
The unilateral decision by some unions to proceed with these hurried negotiations is concerning. Without democratic participation of their members, these unions have already put forward lower proposals than their initial demands. Some union leaders have unforgivably swept away the demand for fixed amount raises[2]. In the current context, there is no reason to demand less than what we were asking for before the crisis. On the contrary!
On top of hazard pay, the union movement could obtain the indexing of salaries to inflation (which was eliminated in the 1990s) and fixed amount salary raises for everybody.
Unions should do everything in their power to win better salaries for health-care workers, and let the blame rest on the government for not caring for its “guardian angels.”
“Before we were swamped. Now we’re swamped and risking our lives every day”
This quote from a hospital employee underlines the distress of those who come in direct contact with people infected by COVID-19. Many frontline employees have not been trained to deal with infectious diseases.
Orderlies cannot keep two meters of social distancing with the people they move. Protective gear is distributed in order of priority, so that administrative personnel and custodians in direct contact with infected people receive their equipment after the other sectors (if at all). Immunosuppressed personnel are risking their lives each day by coming to work, just as personnel are who are already infected by COVID-19. All these people on the bottom salary rungs are those who risk the most in becoming infected. Their unions are receiving panicked calls every day: exhausted colleagues who break down crying, lack of sanitary equipment, aggressive patients, arbitrary personnel relocation, etc.
Their employers asking them to “get through this crisis” in these conditions is irresponsible. And the situation is not getting any better.
Making gains right now: an emergency for health-care workers
This health crisis is political. Unions cannot afford to be on “pause” and be content with “social peace” for the next few years. A union cannot claim to be in social solidarity with unionized health-care employees but in practice push back this solidarity to a later time. It is low-wage workers who will get us out of this crisis, not the Legault government.
Solidarity with these employees implies doing what it takes to win some urgent gains right here, right now, starting with hazard pay, cost of living indexation of salaries and fixed amount raises. To delay negotiations is to risk losing our current leverage for a hypothetical common union mobilization in 18 months. That would also be leaving the health system to crumble, with the risks to the population that are hard to imagine. An unsatisfying governmental decree will have the same disastrous consequences.
Health-care
workers are risking their lives every day under difficult, stressful
conditions. We need some real gains for health-care workers, now!
[1] Québec Premier, during one of his daily press conferences, recently highlighted the importance of the province’s health care workers by calling them “our guardian angels.”
[2] Fixed amount raises (as opposed to fixed percentage raises) increase the salary of all workers by the same fixed hourly amount, thus helping disproportionately the lowest paid workers. Many workers and unions are putting forward such fixed amount demands.
