I am shocked and outraged and feel betrayed in the wake of the agreement in principle on wages reached on June 24th between, on the one hand, the three leaders of the Common Front – FTQ president Michel Arsenault, CSN president Claudette Carbonneau and SISP spokesperson Réjean Parent – and, on the other, the premier and the head of the Treasury Board.
The agreement in principle was reached after only two meetings between the top-level representatives of the trade-union movement and government. The first meeting took place on the evening of June 22nd and lasted two hours. The second and final meeting was a conference call that lasted barely an hour early in the evening of June 24th. It was during this short one-hour discussion – and over the phone if you can believe it – that our representatives received and accepted the government’s “comprehensive final offer.” This only makes me feel even more betrayed!
Whereas:
• According to a Canadian Press wire report of June 6, 2009, the Common Front of trade-union leaders had declared the previous day that “Catch-up wage increases for government employees will be at the heart of the next round of collective bargaining.”
• This wire story was published following “an initial meeting between the trade-union leaders and those in charge of the Quebec government’s purse strings.” In it, Arsenault says that “wages are a priority issue.” He declares that “the wages of government employees have fallen behind those of the majority of Quebeckers and those of unionized [private-sector] workers. So there is some catching up to do.”
• On December 2, 2009, a piece on the Common Front website estimated that “our wages have not kept up with inflation in recent years. [...] Our purchasing power has deteriorated. We have to put a halt to the deterioration in wages. [...] We therefore demand wage increases of two per cent per year from 2010 to 2012 in order to protect our purchasing power. That comes to six per cent over three years.”
• Since 1982, the Institut de la statistique du Québec tells us that our wages have fallen behind increases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) by at least 30 per cent, whichever method of calculation is used. Indeed, the Institut demonstrates that this tendency is now chronic; not only did we lose 20 per cent of our wages in 1982, we received increases (!) of zero per cent in 1998 and 1999, one per cent in 2000 and 2001, 1.5 per cent in 2002, zero per cent again from 2003 to 2005, and then two per cent from 2006 to 2009. On average, that means annual wage increases of a miserly 0.96 per cent during this 12-year period. Given that the average annual rise in the CPI was two per cent over the same time, this means real wages have actually dropped by 10.5 per cent.
• The Common Front has also pointed out that “for comparable jobs, the wages of government employees have fallen 8.7 per cent behind other Quebec workers. Compared to unionized private-sector workers, the figure is 12.4 per cent.” Compared to other public-sector workers, the gap is even bigger: 14 per cent behind the federal civil service; 21.3 per cent behind Crown corporations; and 24.7 per cent behind municipal workers.
• So it was entirely reasonable for the “Common Front to propose moves toward catching up with the private sector through an annual average increase of 49 cents per hour – that is, 1.75 per cent of the average wage for a total increase of 5.25 per cent over the three-year period of the collective agreement.”
• And it wasn’t surprising to see the results of a CROP poll published by the Common Front on June 7th: “96 per cent of Quebeckers want the government to provide the funds required to safeguard our public services”; and “no fewer than 82 per cent [...] feel [...] that it is reasonable for the Common Front to demand wage increases that enable government employees to catch up to all other workers”; and finally, “65 per cent of respondents said that the wage demands of government employees are [...] reasonable.”
• The agreement in principle includes clauses providing for increases of up to 4.5 per cent if inflation is high or if the growth rate surpasses the forecasts spelled out in finance minister Raymond Bachand’s budget.
• The agreement in principle on wages sets out a total increase of six per cent – but over a period of five years rather than three. That means 1.2 per cent annually, or 0.8 per cent less than the average historic increase of the CPI (two per cent). As such, in the first year of my new contract I will only get 0.5 per cent (74 cents per day) more – in contrast to the initial Common Front demand of $5.54. During the second year, I will get $1.11 more per day, and so on. And even if all the stars were to align over the next five years – and I certainly wouldn’t bet on that happening – I would still get only a two per cent raise every year, just enough to cover the rise in the CPI.
• During a June 9th press conference, Claudette Carbonneau said that “chances are good that we will reach an agreement [on wages] before the summer holidays.” But she included the following cautionary note: “There should be no mistake; we do not want an agreement at any cost.”
• On June 23rd, the press relayed Mme Carbonneau’s words of warning: “Our members are not prepared to vote for a deterioration in their wages.” She stuck to her guns: “You can’t ask people to accept a longer agreement where they come out poorer in the end. That’s just crazy.” Réjean Parent went even further: “The premier has fully understood the limits.”
The outcome? On the evening of June 24th, in spite of all the preceding statements, trade-union demands were jettisoned in favour of a weaker government offer spread out over five years instead of three. As Pierre Mouterde wrote in Le Devoir on June 30th, our three trade-union leaders “have endorsed an agreement that is miles apart far from what had been painstakingly ratified by the union movement (11.5 per cent over three years) – and without even trying to really survey their rank and file on the merits of such a counter-proposal [...].”
Accordingly, I accuse our three representatives – Arsenault, Carbonneau and Parent – of high treason against the Common Front’s 475,000 members. I accuse these leaders – whose job was to defend the wages of government employees – of having sold us out. Why did they do so, and for how much?
Dominique Boivin