It means that 30 health and social services institutions – 22 CISSS and CIUSSS, and 8 other institutions – will be brought under the control of Santé Québec, which will become the employer for a large majority of health and social services employees. 

The CISSS and CIUSSS for Bas-Saint-Laurent, Saguenay – Lac-Saint-Jean, Capitale-Nationale, Mauricie-et-Centre-du-Québec, Estrie, Est-de-l'Île-de-Montréal, Montréal West Island, West Central Montréal, Centre-Sud-de-l'Île-de-Montréal, Nord-de-l'Île-de-Montréal, Outaouais, Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Côte-Nord, Gaspésie, Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Chaudière-Appalaches, Laval, Lanaudière, Laurentides, Montérégie-Centre, Montérégie-Est and Montérégie-Ouest. Extra-territorial lab groups will also become part of Santé Québec. 

The other institutions that will become part of Santé Québec are the CHU de Québec – Université Laval, the IUCPQ – Université Laval, the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM), the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), the CHU Sainte-Justine, the Montreal Heart Institute, the Institut national de psychiatrie légale (INPL) Philippe-Pinel, and the Centre régional de santé et de services sociaux de la Baie-James.

Private institutions under agreement, as well as institutions outside the health and social services system, will not become part of Santé Québec, and their employees will not be affected by changes resulting from the transition to Santé Québec.

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All institutions will become part of Santé Québec by December 1, 2024.

In principle, there will be no impact on your position or your job status. However, if you have been simultaneously working for more than one institution within the system and your total number of hours exceeds the regular work week, your employer may ask you to resign from one of the positions or reduce the number of hours you work. If you need guidance about the transition, please don’t hesitate to contact your local team.  

The local provisions currently in force in your institution, as well as the provincial provisions of the 2023-2028 collective agreement, remain in force until further notice. Your working conditions will therefore remain the same when your institution becomes part of Santé Québec on December 1, 2024.  

Bargaining units will remain the same in the short term, but will be reorganized on December 31, 2025, or at an earlier date as determined by the government. The number of job classes will increase from 4 to 6 on that date, and each of the new classes will be represented by a single bargaining unit.

Unions representing members in a given job class will have 110 days to submit a request for certification, after which a union allegiance vote will be triggered if, and only if, more than one union submits a certification request to represent that job class. Within a period of 150 days, the Administrative Labour Tribunal (Tribunal administratif du travail, or TAT) will hand down a final decision on certification. This is known as the union raiding period.

Once a union has achieved certification, it will begin to negotiate the local provisions of the collective agreement. Bargaining talks will last at most 18 months. During this time, the collective agreements of unions that were certified on the day before the new union certification took effect will continue to apply to employees covered by those agreements. 

As of December 1, 2024, you will no longer lose your seniority when you change institutions, since you will continue to work for the same employer. However, under to the law as we understand it, you will not be able to use your seniority to obtain a position in another Santé Québec institution until bargaining talks for local provisions of the collective agreement have come to an end and merged seniority lists have been posted. This posting is supposed to take place within 30 days after the end of the pay period that includes the date on which the new local provisions come into force. If there is a change, we will keep you informed of any new elements that would lead the APTS to review its interpretation.

You may have heard that some unions have obtained retroactive recognition of seniority, in which case you will be wondering if that applies to you. It’s important to be aware that in order to obtain this retroactive recognition, the unions had to agree to recognize the seniority of independent workers from personnel placement agencies. Because the employer did not put this proposal to the APTS during contract talks, your union representatives were not consulted on the terms and conditions associated with it. The APTS is currently carrying out analyses and consultations to assess the impact of such an agreement on your working conditions and to determine what steps should be taken.

The reorganization of bargaining units will eventually bring all laboratory technicians and professionals into Class 6, the new job class for specialized support and cardio-respiratory care technicians and professionals. However, the current administrative structure – under which the lab personnel in one region may be managed by an institution in a different region – may be maintained after the reorganization.