La Presse announced on Wednesday it had reached a deal in principle with half its unions (those affiliated with the FTQ), representing advertising, printing and other workers.
The news caught the other unions (affiliated with the CSN) off guard, and they shot off a communiqué accusing La Presse of negotiating in bad faith.
The CSN unions are the more important ones, because they represent editorial and distribution. Without their okay, nothing really changes.
La Presse is about two-thirds of the way to a deadline it has set for its employees to accept wage concessions. It has threatened to shut down the paper on Dec. 1 if its demands are not met.
Could not connect on the second clickable phrase in this post — shot off a communique. etc.
CSN’s site is down for some reason.
From my knowledge of negotiating tactics (used to be stuck with the job)
having 2 major union in the same work environment makes you able to work them against each other (the first one to sign usually gets the better deal to put pressure on the remaining party, you get to claim they’re unreasonable in their demands)
blue collar unions are a lot more effective than white collar union : less dissent , the workers are willing to stick together and don’t assume they could do a better job than the union rep
it’s also a lot easier to compare to similar fields (example a plumber working for the city compared to one working for himself or a major private company) who usually get better pay but less benefits
white collar union often have jobs that look similar and yet have much lower paygrades (just compare the paygrade between La Presse and Le Devoir or Le journal de Montréal)
And they’re willing to negotiate on their own since they usually assume they’re as smart if not smarter than their reps which seriously undermines the union
If I was a betting man my money would be on the FTQ getting a much better deal than the CSN