Teachers Katharine Hogan and Robert Green discuss the many changes to Quebec’s education system that have been proposed in the last week with CJAD’s James Mennie. From the May 17, 2016 Tommy Shnurmacher Show. Stream the interview below or click here to download the mp3.
May 15, 2016
Common Front deal for Quebec public sector workers wasn’t as good as advertised
A closer look at the agreement reveals inflated numbers. Who will be held accountable?
By Robert Green | Published April 18, 2016 by Ricochet English and 26 avril 2016 by Ricochet français
Now that the dust has settled on Quebec’s negotiations with public sector workers, it’s time for public sector workers to look back on the campaign that was.
For the 400,000+ members of the Common Front, a coalition of public sector unions, one issue in particular demands critical reflection: the manipulative and dishonest way that information about the tentative agreement on salary was presented to the media, the public and the Common Front’s own members.
In general, the act of consciously making untrue statements is considered to be something for which politicians should be held accountable. Many a powerful world leader has fallen as a result of dishonest behaviour, including most recently the president of Iceland. The question for Common Front members is whether this same principle should apply to leaders of labour federations.
To illustrate just how dishonest the Common Front was in presenting the salary agreement to the public, let’s compare it to how this same salary agreement was presented by another labour federation, La Fédération autonome de l’enseignement (FAE), which is not part of the Common Front.
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