she doesn’t think a majority male workforce would be treated the same way.
“we still have this image of women working in care who don’t have their own needs,” she says. “there’s a lot of education that still needs to be done with the general public to recognize the work women do, and to consider it as important as men’s work.”
but bouchard knows it could take months or years before the international labour organization makes any kind of ruling on fiq’s complaint.
“what we wanted to demonstrate was that despite all the interventions that our union has done over many years, the government has continued to do nothing, to say ‘we don’t have a choice, we won’t be able to provide care without mandatory overtime,'” she says. “we wanted to accentuate political pressure, to say, ‘this isn’t acceptable in our workplaces or in our health networks. this was never acceptable.'”
for quebec’s public health system to keep going, the province has to make major changes, she says.
“maybe then people will be more interested in working in public health, because right now that’s not the case.”
quebec’s health department told healthing they won’t be commenting on fiq’s labour complaint. a spokesperson added that mandatory overtime “is not desirable,” and that health authorities are using “all the means at their disposal to avoid it.”
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