Unions demand pay equity in the Quebec public service

Unions protest lack of pay equity in Quebec Health-care union members protested in downtown Montreal for greater pay equity.

Thirteen years later, the Quebec Treasury Board has still not ordered a settlement of the pay equity complaints filed in 2010 on behalf of thousands of clerical and administrative employees in the health and social services network.

Despite a petition to the national assembly to this effect last May and demonstrations across the province over the past year, the government is still turning a deaf ear to this issue, which has been dragging on for far too long, according to representatives of three unions protesting on Saturday as part of a demonstration starting at noon outside the offices of the Treasury Board in Montreal.

According to the Fédération de la santé et des services sociaux (FSSS-CSN), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE-FTQ) and the Syndicat québécois des employées et employés de services (SQEES-FTQ), nearly 30,000 people are still waiting for their complaints under the Pay Equity Act to be settled, an amount that in some cases could range from a few thousand to several tens of thousands of dollars.

The organizers of the demonstration point out that the majority of the workers concerned - administrative officers, management and university teaching assistants, purchasers, medical and legal secretaries, among others - are women, many of them single mothers.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Sept. 9, 2023.