Your negotiating committee met with the MSSS representatives on Tuesday, December 19, for the fourth full day of collective bargaining since late September 2023. We left the session deeply disappointed, to put it politely.
Disappointed by the careless attitude of our counterparts, who undertake to produce documents or present positions so as to move the negotiations forward, but turn up empty-handed at the next meetings, as if it were business as usual.
We presented our overall negotiating objectives in detail more than a year back, in November 2022. Since then, we have constantly explained and re-explained our objectives, tabling more than a dozen documents containing numerous proposals at the Negotiating Table. On the Ministry side, one solitary document was tabled, and that was back at the June 2023 session! That document set out some vague principles, couched in administrative jargon, such as “optimization of services,” “responsible management of resources,” “modernizing the collective agreement” and, what appears to form the Ministerial mantra, “maintaining the service offering”, repeated on December 19, to justify their opposition to any adaptation of work and call duty hours that might help in the least to alleviate residents’ crazy workload.
While the other public sector unions are nearing the end of the road with respect to questions of salary and work organization, our negotiations are far from reaching that point. And that’s not because we haven’t done everything possible to move the negotiations forward more quickly. But it’s always complicated to negotiate with counterparts who are manifestly unfamiliar with the reality experienced by our members—despite our explanations, repeated ad nauseam.
At this stage, we’re prepared to show patience and understanding, since it’s true that resident doctors’ reality is unique in our healthcare system, but the lack of any real developments in the negotiations at the December 19, 2023 bargaining session nevertheless highlights the question of how seriously the MSSS representatives are taking our negotiations.
So, last Tuesday, we reiterated that they need—very soon—to have more concrete mandates to move the negotiations forward in a meaningful way. Because to judge by their performance to date, we have to conclude that, together with you, our colleagues, we will all have to apply political pressure in order to make our impatience known, and clearly to resort to tried and true pressure tactics if we’re to have any hope of getting things moving.
So keep any eye out for the Info Nego newsletters that will be coming your way early in the New Year. We’ll be in a position to assess the situation more accurately after the next bargaining session, scheduled for late January 2024.
In the meantime, we hope you’ll be able to take a little time for yourselves, and with your loved ones, despite the sustained workload you have to bear. In closing, we wish you all the joy of the Holiday Season.
Your Negotiating Committee | 
