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Parents of up to 24,000 Quebec children will have to arrange alternate child care next Friday if 6,500 unionized day-care workers go ahead with a planned one-day strike.
The move will affect about 350 day-care centres.
Jeff Begley, spokesperson for the health and social services federation of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux, said yesterday the union has been trying to get pay equity and salary issues sorted out since an agreement was signed with the Parti Québécois government last March.
Begley charges the government is dragging its heels.
Not so, said Louise Bédard, spokesperson for Carole Théberge, the minister responsible for the family. She pointed out that while some things do take time, salaries have already been increased 2 per cent.
The Quebec Association of Public Day Cares, which represents 850 of the 996 centres in the province, is also against the strike.
Day-care workers earn between $12.24 and $18.36 an hour, depending on where in the province they are employed.
- reprinted from Montreal Gazette