Upgrading the salaries of Québec's teachers

"If Quebec Wants to attract and retain teachers, the government needs to make a major investment ? and that includes salaries for teachers"
- Heidi Yetman, President, QPAT

MONTREAL, Dec. 12, 2019 /CNW Telbec/ - It was with a great deal of frustration but very little surprise that the Fédération des syndicats de l'enseignement (FSE-CSQ) and the Québec Provincial Association of Teachers (APEQ-QPAT) learned about the Statistics Canada publication on teachers' salaries in Canada in 2017-2018, which once again ranks Québec's teachers in last place, far below the Canadian average.

The publication (available here: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/81-604-x/2019001/tbl/tblc3.1-fra.htm) shows a 13% gap between teachers' salaries in Québec and the average for Canada in 2017-2018. Even worse, compared to their colleagues in other provinces, Québec's teachers will need at least five additional years of service to reach the top of their salary scale.

"Québec's teachers are rightly demanding, at the very least, that their salaries should be brought up to the level of the Canadian average, to show that their work is valued," said Luc Gravel, the FSE?CSQ's Labour Relations Vice-President, who is responsible for the provincial negotiations. "We are one day away from submission of the employer's inter-sector offers and less than a week away from submission of the sector-based offers, and the Government needs to understand the message that the question of salaries, like the question of better working conditions, is unavoidable."

The salary demands for teachers are as follows:

• An increase of 8% on April 1, 2020, specifically for teachers, in addition to the public sector demands made by the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ), namely:
• a salary increase of $2 per hour on April 1, 2020 (roughly 4.4% for a teacher at the top of the teachers' salary scale);
• an increase of 3% on April 1, 2021;
• an increase of 3% on April 2, 2022;
• a mechanism to protect buying power if inflation exceeds 2% in a given year.
  

"Clearly, the abolition of the first six steps on the scale, as promised by the Legault Government, will be insufficient to correct this unfair situation, which has persisted for many years," said Heidi Yetman, the QPAT President. "Things need to change now!"

Profile

The Fédération des syndicats de l'enseignement (FSE-CSQ) is a grouping of 34 unions representing more than 65,000 teachers from school boards throughout Québec. Its membership includes teachers from the preschool, elementary, secondary, vocational training and adult general education sectors. It is affiliated with the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ) and negotiates jointly with the Québec Provincial Association of Teachers (APEQ?QPAT), which represents the 8,000 teachers in Québec's English school boards. Together, they represent a total of 73,000 teachers.

SOURCE Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers