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Teachers at EC English Montreal, a private language school, have formed an independent union. Last week, their union won accreditation before Quebec's labour tribunal. The union will soon enter negotiations where they will push for improvements to working conditions as well as better learning conditions for their students.
Monique*, who teaches French and English classes at EC, found herself leading a push to unionize the school's teachers after becoming frustrated with scheduling issues both inside and outside the classroom.
She says that "at the beginning when you're working, you're not really guaranteed how many hours you're going to have. It wasn't very explicitly clear if those hours were going to increase or diminish."
A particular sticking point for Monique was the time allotted for the one-on-one support EC promises its students. "We were expected to do these tutorials, but our boss said, 'Please do them during the class.' So, you have to find a time during the class where you have to speak with a student while the students are doing an activity, and that's kind of not fair to us, and it's not fair to the student."
Further issues at EC include low wages, dirty classrooms, and lack of access to training and resources. After taking her issues to management and getting no support, Monique decided to take matters into her own hands and those of her colleagues:
"I just said, you know, there must be something else that I can do to make it better, because I do love my job as a teacher. So, I got together with one coworker that I thought was somebody that I could trust. And then it turned out he was really trustworthy."
Monique and her colleague began talking to their fellow teachers about their shared issues in the workplace. "I would openly say, 'This is not fair.' You know, 'Are you having this experience, too?'" One by one, EC Montreal's teachers began to sign union cards.
Having now achieved accreditation, the union is now preparing to enter negotiations. A press release by the General Union, with whom the teachers are affiliated, describes the teacher's demands as including "living wage, better and more regular work schedules, and smaller class sizes."
Monique hopes that the negotiations will also result in a more democratic workplace: "We really, really want to take part in the budget, and we also want to take part in the say of how we are going to teach a language to an individual that comes from a different country to take into account their learning background, and we also want to take into account how the resources are going to be managed."
Echoing the sentiments of public sector workers in their recent battles with the Quebec government, Monique emphasized the connection between teachers' working conditions and students' learning conditions:
"We want to make things better for them and also better for us, too. [...] I think it's decent. It's reasonable."
*The worker asked that her name not be disclosed. To improve readability, a pseudonym has been used.