FIQ momentum!
Over the last few months, our actions have enabled us to create extraordinary momentum for the healthcare professional members of the FIQ. We feel it and we see it, the vast majority of the Québec population is behind us and support us in our demands. Not afraid to say it!
Concretely, this momentum is reflected by good bargaining power with the government. We are exactly where we wanted to be.
Our proposal-oriented unionism, which is reflected, among others things, by our new models and our solutions to the problems in the health network, our public interventions, our advertising campaign, our denunciations of unacceptable situations, the culture of advocacy and our fight for safe, quality patient care, has produced results. All of that has enabled us to increase our appreciation rating with the population and, by doing so, increase our bargaining power. We are actors in a credible and respected movement. We have a unique, singular voice that is appreciated in the public debate. We can be proud!
The battle continues
Despite all of that, nothing is certain however. We are facing an obtuse and stubborn government. A government for which a conservative ideology has been elevated to a status of dogma and for which the dismantlement of public services is a societal project. As proof I give you the sectoral offers that the government finally gave us on May 27, five months after the negotiations started.
These are technocratic offers, designed for administrators and not for the patients and the healthcare professionals. The government is demonstrating to us that it doesn’t care about finding real solutions to the problems in the health network and that it is only concerned with making us poorer and overworking us even more.
This is why we have to remain mobilized and to increase our actions of visibility. We are almost the only ones to come to the defence of the quality and the safety of patient care. In this time of general austerity, we are the voice for defending the patients, we are the defenders of our public and universal healthcare system. We are this voice that reverberates and resonates, but many administrators and people of ill will would like to see it shut down.
And they try too often to intimidate us and to silence us. This is why we have recently denounced the code of silence that rules in the healthcare setting. Never will we let ourselves be gagged and never will we accept to be sanctioned because we have denounced unacceptable situations for the patients and the healthcare professionals.
Régine Laurent, President
Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec – FIQ
*Extract from the publication FIQ en Action, Federal Council, May 25, 26 and 27, 2015