Highlights of this Info Nego:
New evolving poster, media campaign, and other forthcoming action
To be given more respect
Starting negotiations afresh
The ball is now in our camp to get things moving forward
Hello ,
In the last Info Nego, we told you the negotiations were headed for an impasse. We can now regrettably confirm that, after 15 months of bargaining sessions, we have hit a brick wall on all the major issues.
The Negotiating Committee therefore reported to the Delegates’ Assembly meeting this past October 18-19. We had also notified the MSSS representatives that this meeting was being held, to give them a chance to show us they were prepared to negotiate in good faith. But to no avail. The government party chose not to move away from their contradictory discourse and their rollback proposals.
In a secret ballot, delegates voted 100% in favour of a new mobilization plan involving different steps and measures, ultimately including strike action.
This plan is already being implemented, and over the coming weeks you will be receiving further detailed information about the different actions that will be taken this fall.
New evolving poster on issues at stake in the negotiations, media campaign, and other forthcoming action
You can already learn about the main issues at stake in the negotiations by looking at a new poster being installed in residents’ lounges across Quebec.
A media campaign will be launched, as well, to explain our members’ work more clearly to the public. You will also gradually be informed of action in support of the negotiations, notably via the FMRQ’s member-only mobile app, which we invite you to download from the App Store or Google Play if you have not already done so.
More respect for our role and work
Our goal is still to show the Quebec government that resident doctors are an essential component in the delivery of healthcare services to the public and that, as such, they deserve to be treated with more respect.
When the MSSS’s representatives actually say, at the negotiating table, that resident physicians—who work 50-75 hours a week, including call duty—deliver care to the public “only in some respects,” that is unacceptable.
When the MSSS and provincial Treasury Board representatives refuse to carry out a comparative assessment of resident doctors’ pay, making it quite clear that residents, as “mere learners,” should count themselves lucky they are paid at all, that demonstrates a total lack of respect for, and recognition of, members’ work.
And when you add demands for rollbacks to limit how we can take the leave provided for in our collective agreement, and the proposal to reimburse in future only 50% of our tuition fees, passing on an annual bill averaging more than $2,500 per member, that becomes quite simply ridiculous!
Negotiations must be started afresh
It is therefore not possible to get negotiations moving forward in a positive direction in such a context, and the MSSS representatives’ rhetoric about dialogue and “principled negotiation” no longer has any credibility whatsoever.
The FMRQ has filed motions against the MSSS and a number of establishments, specifically to report bad-faith bargaining practices, and those cases should be heard by the Administrative Labour Tribunal in late November.
So the ball is now in our camp
If we do not want new constraints to be added to how and when we take the precious leave provided for us in the collective agreement;
If we do not want to pay $2,500 more each year in tuition fees, when all our members already have their medical degree (MD) under their belt and are delivering full-time care in healthcare establishments;
If we do not want to be pushed back farther in terms of our compensation compared with all other care team employees with whom we work on a daily basis;
If we want more respect for, and tangible recognition of, our enormous workload and the significant scope of the care we deliver to the public “in every respect”;
If we want a new collective agreement, finally, when ours expired back in 2021 and we have been attempting—in vain—to renew it for two years now . . .
Then things have to be moved forward. Keep an eye out for upcoming communications. It’s high time we mobilized!
Your Negotiating Committee | 
