Days after Quebec’s adjudicators issued an ultimatum due to a lack of “concrete proposals” over their demands for major pay hikes, Quebec Crown prosecutors, “dismayed and insulted” by the Quebec government’s “bad faith” during negotiations, filed a motion before Quebec Superior Court to invalidate a government decision that affects their working conditions, the latest labour conflict to surface between the Quebec government and leading legal actors.
The application for judicial review and motion, the second legal challenge the Quebec Association of Public Prosecutors for Criminal and Penal Prosecutions has mounted over the past three months, was launched after the Quebec government unilaterally rejected or modified recommendations made by an arbitrator appointed by both parties over normative conditions, including workload, family leave and remote working, said Guillaume Michaud, the organization’s president.
“The aim of this appeal is to get the government to follow the recommendations of an independently appointed arbitrator,” explained Michaud. “If it doesn’t, we end up with a useless mechanism. This means that on day one when I sit down with the government to negotiate, I know that in the end it can decide what it wants. It makes no sense for the other side to have a say at the end and then decide what it wants.”
