Province tables bill to reform labour practices
The Quebec government tabled its long-awaited bill regarding provincial labour standards on Tuesday that should bring about changes for both unionized and non-unionized employees.
The reform bill, tabled at the National Assembly by Labour Minister Dominique Vien, would ban disparities in any new retirement and insurance plans that are less generous to employees hired at later dates than others. However, existing plans already in place will be protected by “transitional provisions” called for in the bill.
Currently, salary scales for employees hired after a given date, within the same company, are prohibited by law because they are considered to be discriminatory. But the same cannot be said about retirement and insurance plans.
“They have abandoned young people for the employers’ lobby,” said Serge Cadieux, secretarygeneral for the FTQ.
Cadieux, part of one of Quebec’s largest unions with more than 600,000 members, said he was particularly unhappy with the fact the government is “giving an amnesty to all the employers that are delinquent” by saying “you have discriminated and you can continue.”
Cadieux noted that 200,000 people working as skilled labourers in Quebec are subject to such disparities.
Yves-Thomas Dorval, president of the Conseil du patronat du Québec, noted that such disparity clauses exist within unionized companies because they were negotiated by both parties. “It is possible that during the next negotiation, the unions seeking to use the ban in the (proposed) legislation could use it as a pressure tactic to make changes” to retirement plans already in place.
By consequence, “we think that within unionized companies there are risks of having prolonged conflicts, more of them and more complex, with this ban,” Dorval said.
The bill also calls for employees to get a third week of vacation after three years of service with the same employer as opposed to the current five years.
Non-unionized workers are currently allowed to have 10 days off per year, without pay, for sick days or family and parental obligations. The reform bill would require that two of those days be paid by employers.
“It has gone from zero to two. We can say that things have advanced, but the law has been in place since 1980. And after all these years, adding two days off paid, that is the very least of things,” said Mélanie Gauvin, a spokesperson for a group that represents non-unionized employees.
Martine Hébert, a spokesperson for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, estimates the cost of the changes to employers will be between $600 million and $690 million.
The bill will also call for placement agencies for temporary foreign workers to have a permit. It also calls for sanctions to be levied on companies that use the services of such agencies that operate without permits. Cadieux called that part of the bill a “huge step” toward dealing with the problem of “fly by night” agencies that shut down without paying temporary workers what they are owed. He said the proposed legislation would at least offer workers recourse against employers.
Presse Canadienne