Government offers: Healthcare professionals are offended
This morning, the Fédération interprofessionnel de la santé du Québec – FIQ took note of the employer offers as part of the renewal of the collective agreement for healthcare professionals in the health network. The FIQ finds that the offers do not meet healthcare professionals’ expectations at all.
Remuneration
The employer salary offer is for 9% over 5 years, whereas the FIQ is demanding 12% over 3 years, along with purchasing power protection and an upgrade to make up for the inflation in recent months.
“The government’s offers clearly are not on par with the sacrifices healthcare professionals have been enduring for far too long. The government is clearly off target when it comes to becoming an employer of choice. Our members expect significant changes for better salary and practice conditions. We deserve to have the feeling of a job well done when we go home after a shift. We want recognition for our full value and we deserve work-personal life balance. Once our members see the current offer they will undoubtedly be offended,” deplored FIQ President Julie Bouchard.
More DISCUSSION FORUMS. Really?
Once again, the government is proposing too many discussion forums on many topics. It wants to create lots of committees to talk about different subjects like team stability, mandatory overtime, and the organization of work time. This is totally inefficient and will not quickly resolve the problems in the health network.
There is nothing concrete to put an end to mandatory overtime, nothing concrete to gradually reduce the use of agency staff, nothing concrete to recognize healthcare professionals’ work and lessen their workload, such as ratios would.
“Priority issues are handled at the bargaining table. There’s no need for endless forums. The FIQ has concrete, doable solutions that can be quickly implemented to save the health network. The network is broken and we need to take quick action,” stated Julie Bouchard.