16 June 2020
With the announcement of which scenario the government has chosen for the resumption of school in the fall, the Fédération du personnel de soutien scolaire (FPSS-CSQ) is pleased that the government has accepted its recommendation to make school attendance compulsory.
“Now that schools will be resuming normal operations, the government needs to cancel the ministerial orders they issued in recent weeks,” says FPSS-CSQ President Éric Pronovost. “They should never have existed anyway. Our collective agreements and, above all, our sense of duty were always sufficient.”
The Legault government’s ministerial orders allow employers to bypass existing employment contracts.
“Unfortunately, some managers have taken advantage of these ministerial orders to abuse school support staff. The working conditions of these employees were already being abused before the health crisis. Everything has worsened in the past few weeks, even though we have been at the front from the start. We are being asked to do the impossible, with no recognition offered in return,” says Pronovost.
School support staff were already being greatly affected by the manpower shortage, job insecurity and poor working conditions.