MONTREAL – In a court decision that has just been rendered, the negotiators of the health network are blamed … for having paid a premium to nurses and beneficiary attendants, bypassing their unions.
This temporary bonus of $ 75 was paid to those who agreed to work for several consecutive weekends, from July 13 to September 15, 2019. It had been implemented to try to compensate for the scarcity of manpower, particularly the workers. weekends and summer.
It concerned four job titles: nurses, nursing assistants, orderlies and health and social services auxiliaries.
In its decision, the Administrative Labor Tribunal harshly blames the Employers’ Negotiating Committee in health and social services. He accuses him of having “acted unilaterally, as if there were no unions”.
The employers’ committee “unilaterally identified, developed, quantified, then implemented, without consultation or negotiation, a temporary bonus for certain employment”, writes administrative judge Jean-François Séguin in his decision.
The Labor Code stipulates that when a union is certified, it has the exclusive power to represent all the members of the unit for which it has been certified.
The Administrative Labor Tribunal concludes that the employers’ committee thus hampered the activities of the two major unions that had filed a complaint, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Quebec Union of Service Employees (SQEES), both affiliated at the FTQ.
The employers’ committee “acted illegally, completely disregarding its obliged interlocutors, and thus hampered the activities of the unions, in complete violation of the Labor Code”, writes the administrative judge.
He ordered him to communicate the decision to all the employees concerned of these two unions, ie 35,000 workers. And he’s giving her eight days to do it.
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