MONTREAL – Starting tomorrow, Tuesday, FIQ's 80,000 members will be invited to vote on the conciliator's recommendation with a view to renewing their collective agreement.
Member voting takes place from Tuesday at 8pm until Thursday at 8pm. This comes after the general assemblies that were held in recent weeks to inform members of the content of Al-Muwaffaq’s proposal.
The Joint Health Union represents the vast majority of nurses, practical nurses, respiratory therapists and clinical perfusionists in Quebec.
This is actually a proposal recommended by the conciliator, and not an agreement in principle. This recommendation was made by the conciliator as a “reasonable balance between the two parties,” FIQ said when the proposal was announced.
If this recommendation is ratified by members, it will become the FIQ Collective Agreement.
If not, the two parties will likely return to the negotiating table.
Moreover, a preliminary agreement was reached between the two parties, but it was the members who rejected it, by 61%, last spring.
Since this rejection, as part of the ensuing discussions, the mobility required for nurses has been further defined, according to the text of the FIQ presentation to its members.
The issue of mobility, the movement of nurses from one care unit to another, or even from one institution to another, was at the heart of the dispute and the main reason why the agreement was rejected in principle.
