News

Montréal – The health and social services ministry (MSSS) recently announced that it plans to abolish the graduate medical laboratory technician job title, claiming this will alleviate the labour shortage in some laboratories by forcing employees to take positions as medical technologists. Labour organizations representing workers in the public health and social services system – the APTS, FSSS-CSN, FP-CSN, FIQ, FSQ-CSQ, CUPE and SQEES – have been unanimous in their response, condemning an unjustified and inefficient move that will fail to solve the current crisis in medical labs.

According to the seven labour organizations, the MSSS initiative will simply make the situation worse. Rather than bringing more personnel into labs, it will force hundreds of employees to join a professional order while they assume responsibilities that do not require them to do so. It will not improve services or acknowledge existing expertise. Forcing employees who do not perform reserved acts to become members of a professional order will pointlessly increase the pressure on an already fragile system, and might even aggravate the retention problem by inducing some to quit their jobs.

“This measure won’t solve anything,” said the spokespersons of the seven labour organizations, Robert Comeau (APTS), Réjean Leclerc (FSSS-CSN), Jessica Goldschleger (FP-CSN), Julie Bouchard (FIQ), Isabelle Dumaine (FSQ-CSQ), Fanny Demontigny (CUPE) and Sylvie Nelson (SQEES-FTQ), speaking with one voice. “All it does is displace the problem without addressing the root causes of the staffing shortage in labs: difficult working conditions, a lack of professional recognition and a defective organization of work.”

The labour organizations noted that the MSSS had already tried to implement a similar measure in the spring of 2023, before backing down when faced with union mobilization and arguments. Today, the unions assert that nothing has changed: the project is as ill-advised and ineffective as it was two years ago, and they intend to use all available means to make the MSSS see reason and to prevent the abolition of the job title.