Striking teachers and their supporters hold a rally in front of Premier François Legault's office, Friday, Dec. 22, 2023, in Montreal. The Quebec government has reached a tentative deal with a union representing about 40 per cent of the province's teachers, who have been on strike since Nov. 23. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
MONTREAL – A Quebec parents group says its members are hopeful that hundreds of schools that have been shut since late November by a teachers strike will reopen as scheduled in January now that the government has reached a tentative deal with a major union.
On Wednesday night, a union representing around 40 per cent of the province’s teachers said it was ready to present to its leadership a “global settlement” – which covers salaries and working conditions – that would pave the way for more than 66,000 teachers to end their walkout, which began Nov. 23.
Sylvain Martel, spokesman for parents group Regroupement des comités de parents autonomes du Québec, said he was feeling hopeful but remaining cautious that 800 schools would reopen after the holiday break.
“We’re glad that we’re able to hope for going back to school on Jan. 9, but everything is tentative, lots of people have to agree to what’s on the table, so lets hope that it’s a real deal and (union) members will get what they want,” he said in an interview Thursday.
Even if everything goes well Martel said strike-affected students will have been out of class for nearly seven weeks.
“It’s very difficult for students to go back to the same rhythm they were in November, so it’s going to take a little while, but we’ll get there,” he said.
Fédération autonome de l’enseignement – or FAE – said its council that oversees the negotiations will decide Thursday whether to present the deal to members for approval. The FAE said its council will also vote on Thursday whether to continue the strike.
The FAE took the most hard line out of all the public sector unions negotiating new contracts with the government when it launched an unlimited general strike. About 600,0000 workers in sectors such as health care and education are negotiating with the province at the same time. The largest union group, known as the “common front,” with around 420,000 members, including approximately 100,000 teachers, staged a series of short-term strikes over a total of 10 days.
Martel said discussions have been taking place between teachers, parents and administrators about how children will catch up after missing so much school. How that happens will vary, he said, because the effects of the strikes were unequal: some parents taught their children at home, others hired tutors and many less-fortunate students spent weeks with little to no learning at all.
The FAE declined to give interviews on Thursday. “We will leave it to our council to determine if this is an agreement in principle that responds to the pressing needs of teachers as well as their students,” FAE president Mélanie Hubert said in a news release. “The 66,500 members of the FAE have just spent 22 days in the streets, without pay, to be heard. We will respect our democratic process before saying more.”
The FAE says its council has the authority to suspend the strike before the deal is approved by members.
In a statement issued shortly after midnight by the office of Treasury Board Chair Sonia LeBel, the government said the proposal would allow schools to offer better services to students because teachers would see “improvements in the way work is organized, the workload, class composition, professional autonomy and remuneration.”
The government said the deal will remain confidential until it is approved.
Martel said that in the week before the Christmas break – when it seemed like a deal wasn’t in sight – his group heard from many parents. “There was a lot of despair,” he said.
Parents of young children learning to read and write were particularity anxious, he said, as were parents of children in their final years of secondary school, whose grades will affect their placement in junior colleges.
Meanwhile, the Quebec government announced earlier this week it had reached tentative deals on working conditions with all the members of the common front; salaries and benefits were still being negotiated. The common front has threatened to launch an unlimited general strike in the new year if they can’t settle with the province.
Martel said he’s optimistic that if the FAE approves the agreement, the other teachers unions will follow.
Now that the FAE has a tentative deal with the government, the only union without one is a major nurses union with about 80,000 members – Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec – which said Thursday that negotiations are ongoing.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 28, 2023.
