Press Releases

INFO-NÉGO # 4 Takeaway Only pressure from teachers will yield progress at the bargaining table! Next steps Participate in end-of-term actions Read The Common Front was present in Sherbrooke to…

INFO-NÉGO #3 Takeaway Mobilization drives our bargaining efforts To do Participate in union actions in your workplaces on May 1 and afterwards Read ASPPC’s detailed bargaining demands  After the government…

INFO-NÉGO #2 : The negotiations are underway! The Takeaway  The ASPPC unanimously rejected the employer offer tabled on December 16th, 2022 Next Steps  Participate in your union’s general assembly and…

Sectoral negotiations start up Takeaway The ASPPC Negotiating Committee formally tabled its initial list of demands at a meeting with management on October 21. Its counterpart, the Comité patronal de…

The McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union was dismayed to learn of the planned closure of the University’s Conservatory of Music at the end of this summer. “The administration must…

It is now official: the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), the Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ), and the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ) will form a…

March 2022 – Info-négo FNEEQ_ENG  

All stakeholders agree that a locally-appointed board of directors, with full representation from each region’s community and socio-economic groups and each institution’s students, staff and alumni, would allow services to…

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Cette page est également disponible en FR The teaching faculty at Marianopolis College unanimously approved their first collective agreement at last night’s General Assembly meeting. Just two years after successfully…

Cette page est également disponible en FR Until Champlain Regional College’s institutional problems are addressed, teachers and support staff at St. Lawrence and St-Lambert Colleges, as well as St. Lawrence’s…

This week, tens of thousands of you will be exercising your right to strike in the public-sector negotiations with the government.

We, the private-sector teachers and support staff of the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN), wish to publicly express our support for your fight with this letter. FNEEQ-CSN includes 43 unions in the private education sector that together represent nearly 4,000 members. We believe you are being subjected to underhanded and brutal attacks in this collective bargaining process: ludi-crous salary offers, increased workload, greater job precarity, cuts to pension plans, and the list goes on.

Quebec university contract professors, who number over 15,000, decry the negative effects of the budget cuts currently being imposed by the Government of Quebec on the higher education sector. In the face of growing class size and decreased services to students, contract professors fear a decline in the quality of education and of academic support and are outraged at the silence of our university rectors, who appear to be placidly implementing these cuts to the detriment of the fundamental educational mission of the institutions they oversee.

On September 30th, the Teaching Assistants and Invigilators’ Union (AGSEM) Unit 1 (Teaching As-sistants) held their General Assembly to vote on a Global Offer of Settlement from McGill. Having been presented with the details of the offer by the Unit 1 Bargaining Committee, TAs engaged in a vigorous debate before voting on a motion to ratify. The votes were counted for a total of 172 in favour and 101 opposed, and the offer was accepted.

Staff and faculty of Champlain Regional College are in disbelief that Central Administration failed to present a new plan for restructuring the Director of Studies position to increase the academic autonomy of the three campuses at Wednesday’s Board of Governors meeting, disregarding a board resolution adopted unanimously in June. The management team claimed that no written records or audio recordings had been kept of the June decision.

At this time last year a significant number of faculty and staff, as well as alumni, retirees, students and community members from the St. Lawrence campus of Champlain Regional College (CRC) attended a Board meeting in Drummondville to demonstrate solidarity and voice concerns during question period about governance and college structure. Since that time, a study was commissioned to examine the current role and responsibilities of the college’s Director of Studies, a position currently designated to a single person in Central Administration in Sherbrooke. While concerns about the centralized CRC structure have been present since the early 1990’s, the fact that three Directors of Studies have left the college in the last six years brought this question to a head. The final report, presented in March at a CRC Board of Governors meeting, recommended a decentralisation of powers in matters concerning the Director of Studies position and the management of pedagogy and academic programs.

At their special general assembly on Friday evening, the members of the McGill Course Lecturers and Instructors Union (MCLIU) voted by an overwelming majority to adopt their first collective agreement. MCLIU is an affiliate of the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN).

Sylvain Marois, the Vice-President of FNEEQ-CSN for the regroupement université, stated: “The long struggle of McGill University’s course lecturers and instructors to obtain recognition of the value of their work has just come to an end…. The union members can be proud of thivote, the fruit of prolonged effort.”

Teaching Assistants at McGill University, represented by the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM), will be on strike on April 16th, the first day of final exams.

Members of the non-teaching personnel section of the Syndicat des enseignantes et enseignants de Villa Maria – CSN, Villa Maria High School’s teachers’ union, voted unanimously to accept the agreement in principle reached with the school’s management in a general meeting held March 25.

For union president Mathieu Morin, the successful negotiation of this first collective agreement for Villa Maria’s non-teaching staff is an important victory.

A special event will be held tomorrow, February 19th, to launch the campaign to help St-Lawrence campus of Champlain Regional College become an independent college—un cégep à part entière.

Whereas in the United States:

• More than 75% of college and university courses are given by adjuncts and contingent faculty with fixed-term contracts;

At a special general meeting of the Syndicat des enseignantes et enseignants de Villa Maria – CSN section Personnel Non Enseignant, 95% of the members present voted to renewed their bank of 24 hours of strike action.

After nearly 30 trips to the bargaining table in a negotiation process that has been dragging on since September 2013, members of the non-teaching personnel section of the Syndicat des enseignantes et enseignants de Villa Maria – CSN have decided to protest the obstinacy of management by staging a one-day walkout.

The Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN) is pleased to welcome a new union from the college sector to its ranks. Teachers from Marianopolis College, a more than century-old post-secondary institution in Montréal, sought FNEEQ affiliation and were granted union certification by the Labour Commissioner this past April 16th. This is the ninth union from the private college level  to join the federation.

Employees of Queen of Angels Academy were informed late last week that the Dorval private girls’ school will be closing its doors at the end of the 2013-2014 academic year.

Caroline Quesnel, FNEEQ vice-president responsible for the private sector, deplores the fact that this decision was presented to the school’s teachers and support staff as a done deal.

During a General Assembly on May 15th, exam invigilators at McGill University approved an agreement-in-principle recently concluded before an arbitrator named by the Ministry of Labour. The agreement, which brings more than two years of negotiation to a close, is the first collective agreement for these employees.

This year, Quebec’s back-to-school period will go down as unique in history, as it will force thousands of students to go back to class under the coercive pressure of emergency law Act 12 (previously Bill 78). We consider this Act to be abusive and antidemocratic, severely impeding the right to freedom of expression, demonstration and association. 

Teaching Assistants at McGill last night approved a contract including a new guarantee for three hours of paid pedagogical training for first-time TAs, wage increases of 3%, 3%, and 1.2% over three years, guarantees for sufficient meeting time between TAs and course supervisors, and a written and formal commitment from McGill to make every effort to improve teaching support for undergraduate courses by such means as utilizing Teaching Assistants.

The ongoing course lecturers’ union drive at McGill University has come to an end as an official request has been made yesterday to recognize the course lecturers as part of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM).

On November 9, 2010 at our last General Meeting, the negotiating committee presented an agreement in principle that was subsequently adopted at 100% by the members at the meeting.

The bargaining process that began in 2007 was never easy. After many years of discussions with the employer, the presence of a conciliator from the ministère du Travail (Ministry of Labour) and the exemplary mobilization and solidarity of the members, the union was proud to conclude bargaining. The agreement in principle that was presented to the General Meeting was deemed satisfactory for the union and its contents were exactly the same as the agreement reached with the employer at the end of October 2010.

The 10th edition of World Social Forum (WSF) is kicking off tomorrow – Sunday, February 6 – in Dakar, Senegal.  Until February 11, thousands of delegates from various civil society organizations will be meeting together within the context of capitalism in crisis, which calls for novel, global solutions. The Confédération des syndicats nationaux will be there once again this year.

Nine people form the CSN delegation, which includes its vice-president, Louis Roy. On February 9, he will lead a special workshop on the Quality Public Services – Action Now! campaign. This campaign was launched last fall in Geneva by the Council of Global Unions, which brings together large democratic union federations from all countries. One of its objectives is to convince municipalities and public administrations to become involved in promoting and defending public services, particularly by endorsing a global charter.

The staff of Queen of Angels academy in Dorval held their first General Meeting on September 30, 2010.

Invited to vote on the question of their union affiliation, a majority of membres of the Heritage Faculty Association chose to become affiliated with the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN). This adds to an already important increase in membership that the FNEEQ-CSN has enjoyed since the start of the current academic year through the ongoing affiliation campaign in unions that were members of the Fédération autonome du collegial (FAC).

By a two-to-one margin, members of the Dawson Teachers’ Union voted in a referendum yesterday to disaffiliate from the Fédération autonome du collégial (FAC) and to join the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN).

The Ontario government is passing up a chance to improve teaching conditions at York University by legislating an end to the strike by the university’s contract faculty and teaching, research and graduate assistants, says Ronald Cameron, the president of the Fédération national des enseignantes et enseignants du Québec (CSN), which represents both sessional lecturers and teaching assistants in Quebec.

This week, educators across the continent are calling attention to the employment conditions of contingent academic staff at our colleges and universities. These professionals form the often-unacknowledged labour force that makes the…

Unionized teaching assistants at McGill University signed the final text of their third collective agreement with the administration today, more than a month after they voted to end an eleven-week strike for better working conditions.

Recall that members of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) overwhelmingly approved a new collective agreement with the university last week. Since then, the university has offered…

In the largest General Assembly since their rejection of the Administration’s "Global Offer" on May 6th, McGill’s teaching assistants voted resoundingly in favour of accepting the settlement recommendation of the conciliator appointed by the Minister of Labour. Now that the text of the Collective Agreement has been ratified, only the Back-to-Work Protocol addressing TAs dismissed and suspended from other campus employment remains. It has been reported incorrectly in the media that our strike is over.  While we are closer than ever to a settlement, negotiations continue on the Back-to-Work Protocol. The strike does not end until the Back-to-Work Protocol has been ratified to ensure an orderly return to work. Here is the press release after the vote :

McGill University’s striking teaching assistants voted 96 per cent, during a general assembly Thursday evening, to accept a conciliator’s recommendations and approve a new collective agreement. However, the strike continues as a back-to-work protocol is negotiated with the university administration. The 2,000 members of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) have been on strike since April 8 to obtain improvements to salaries and working conditions that recognize their contribution to McGill’s pedagogical mission.

Thanks to a last-ditch effort from a provincial conciliator, the union representing McGill University’s striking teaching assistants reached an agreement-in-principle with the university administration yesterday. The 2,000 members of the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) have been on strike since April 8 over issues relating to professional recognition, workload and wages.

Visit the AGSEM Web Site

McGill University’s striking teaching assistants and their friends will host a “Shame-On-The-Admin” rally at the Roddick Gates at noon to 3:30 pm today, May 30. The Association of Graduate Students…

By the overwhelming margin of 86.4 per cent, McGill University’s striking teaching assistants voted to reject a "global" contract offer from the McGill administration during a general assembly held Tuesday evening. Despite a series of ruthless tactics employed by the McGill administration since their strike was declared April 8, the result clearly demonstrates that teaching assistants refuse to be bullied into accepting an offer that does not respond to their most important priorities.

On Thursday 24 April 2008, McGill’s Administration distributed throughout the university community a letter issued by Deputy Provost, Morton J. Mendelson (student life and learning). Not only does Mr. Mendelson illegally interfere with the union’s business, but his letter also made the claim that the Commission des Relations du Travail du Québec (CRT) supported – in a decision made without the presence of the AGSEM’s legal representatives – the university’s interpretation of the application of Quebec labour laws in the context of the ongoing TA strike.

The exam period has now started. McGill is pretending that the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM) strike will have no impact. This remains to be seen. This…

McGill University is illegally firing graduate students from their contracts as exam invigilators if they belong to the union representing striking teaching assistants. As well, the university is refusing to hire teaching assistants for this work because of the labour conflict with their union.