Quebec infrastructure agency’s four bargaining units placed under essential-services rules

Quebec’s Tribunal administratif du travail has ordered the Société québécoise des infrastructures and unions representing four employee categories to maintain essential services during any strike, finding that withdrawing technical, security and maintenance functions could endanger people using government buildings.

Administrative judge François Beaubien’s August 24, 2026 decision involving the SQI and SCFP locals 2929 and 5522, files 1458926-71-2601, 1458928-71-2601, 1458930-71-2601 and 1458931-71-2601, also suspended each affected unit’s exercise of the right to strike until it complied with articles 111.0.18 and 111.0.23 of the Labour Code.

The ruling establishes that the essential-services framework applies. It does not settle final staffing levels, require every employee to keep working or impose a permanent strike ban. The tribunal expressly distinguished that threshold decision from the later work of identifying the services, people and arrangements needed during a particular strike.

Four units, different functions

The SQI develops and manages public infrastructure and provides buildings and related services to provincial ministries and agencies. Its responsibilities include premises used for detention, courts, policing, public-health laboratories and road operations. The tribunal treated it as a public service under the Code because it is an agent of the Quebec state.

A statutory reorganization created five employee categories, each forming a separate bargaining unit. SCFP 5522 represents category 1—engineers, architects and chartered appraisers—and category 3, covering other professionals. SCFP 2929 represents category 4, comprising trades workers, and category 5, comprising technicians and office employees. Those four categories were the subject of this decision.

The legal staff in category 2 were not included in the orders. As procedural background, the reasons describe a separate July 9, 2026 ruling that did not subject the SQI and the union representing its lawyers and notaries to essential-services obligations. The August decision assessed the functions of the other units rather than treating the agency’s entire workforce alike.

A limit on strike rights requires more than inconvenience

Article 111.0.17 permits an essential-services order where a strike in a public service could endanger public health or safety. Beaubien emphasized that this power must be exercised cautiously because it restricts a constitutionally protected right. Inconvenience, disruption and economic harm from a strike are not enough.

The assessment is nevertheless prospective. It considers possible future strikes regardless of their timing or duration, rather than waiting for an emergency to occur. At this stage, the tribunal said, the risk created by interrupting a single service can be enough to bring the parties within the essential-services framework; a complete list of required services is not yet necessary.

The unions challenged the connection between the SQI employees’ work and public safety. They pointed to routine absences, vacant positions, a lack of recent after-hours call-ins, qualified managers and existing contractors. They also argued that the agency could not use essential-services rules to avoid ordinary strike consequences or disproportionately restrict protected activity.

Technical support can protect building occupants

For category 1, the SQI relied on the work of operations-expertise coordinators and engineering coordinators. It described their role in assessing technical failures, directing corrective work and supporting safe operation of complex building systems. Their absence, it argued, could delay responses to serious mechanical or electrical problems in sensitive premises.

SCFP 5522 responded that qualified managers could assume these responsibilities, that some absences and vacancies were not filled, and that certain employees had not been called in outside normal hours for years. It characterized the work as support rather than direct service to the public and argued that restricting the employees’ strike rights was unjustified.

The tribunal accepted the SQI’s evidence that the work was connected to occupants’ safety. It distinguished ordinary absences from a strike: the absence of past call-ins did not establish an absence of risk, and a strike would remove the employer’s normal ability to recall employees. A serious heating failure in winter illustrated why timely technical intervention could matter in a detention facility or courthouse.

Whether managers could perform required work was a different question, to be addressed when the parties negotiated how essential services would be delivered under article 111.0.18. It did not prevent the tribunal from placing category 1 within the framework.

One security role was enough for the other professionals’ unit

For category 3, the SQI proposed several functions involving building security and information technology. SCFP 5522 again relied on the availability of managers and consultants, ordinary periods without replacement staff and the absence of direct services to the public.

Beaubien found that interruption of the building-security coordinator’s functions could impair the handling of risks and incidents affecting safe occupation of sensitive buildings. That finding was enough to subject the unit to essential-services obligations. To avoid taking over the parties’ task of agreeing on the required services, he expressly declined to decide whether the other identified functions—including the information-technology roles—had to be included.

The tribunal also rejected reliance on contractors as a complete answer. In discussing category 3, it explained that article 109.1(b) prevents using another employer’s personnel or contractors to perform strikers’ functions beyond the work they ordinarily carry out. Existing external resources could not simply be assumed to provide unrestricted replacement labour.

Trades and technical staff raised distinct safety concerns

The category 4 analysis was narrower. SCFP 2929 acknowledged the essential nature of stationary-engineer functions providing continuous supervision of electromechanical systems at the government’s Complexe G. Because both parties recognized that interruption could create a public-health or safety danger, the tribunal found no need to go further before subjecting that unit to the framework.

Category 5 produced a broader dispute. The SQI described monitoring-centre, building-operation, instrumentation, security and technology-support functions. SCFP 2929 argued that the essential public missions belonged to the agencies occupying the buildings, not to the SQI’s technicians. It also emphasized normal weekends and holidays without compulsory availability, called the predicted risks hypothetical, and proposed managers and outside suppliers as less restrictive alternatives.

The tribunal found a direct safety connection in monitoring emergencies and maintaining or repairing critical building systems. It rejected the suggestion that the occupants’ responsibilities displaced those of the SQI as owner and operator. The two were complementary: occupants’ ability to provide their own essential services depended on functioning infrastructure.

Nor did describing possible consequences conditionally undermine the evidence. The tribunal said article 111.0.17 required a direct and foreseeable risk if services were withdrawn, not proof that a disaster had already happened. Planned absences left the employer able to recall staff in a crisis; a strike presented a different situation. Managers’ participation belonged in the later negotiation stage, while replacement work by external suppliers remained subject to the Code’s restrictions.

The operative orders pair an essential-services requirement with a conditional suspension of strike rights for each of the four accreditations: AC-3000-3872 and AC-3000-3877 under SCFP 5522, and AC-3000-3879 and AC-3000-3878 under SCFP 2929. Each suspension lasts until the relevant union satisfies articles 111.0.18 and 111.0.23. The reasons do not establish that a strike occurred, that an emergency materialized or that the parties subsequently completed those requirements.