The discussion forums do not only make the unions cringe: the French-language school service centers and the English-language school boards claim to have been excluded from them by the Quebec government, even though they are the employers.
What is more, the president and director general of the Fédération des centers de services scolaire du Québec, Caroline Dupré, affirms that Quebec had even dismissed them by telling them that these discussion forums would not really be used to negotiate, but only to discuss.
However, the President of the Treasury Board, Sonia LeBel, said the opposite, in an interview with Cogeco on Monday morning, assuring that these forums were indeed “negotiation tables”.
Ms. Dupré does not understand why the school service centers have been excluded from these discussion forums, one of which deals specifically with “class team”. The school service centers are the employers, she argues.
She explains that the law governing the bargaining system in the public sector specifies that the employer, that is the management bargaining committee, must take part in negotiations with its union counterparts.
Lia Levesque, The Canadian Press
