Expiring health-care contracts put 2024 in spotlight

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This article was published 19/07/2023 (830 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Health-care employees will head to a crowded bargaining table next year, as contracts between Shared Health and several unions are set to expire simultaneously.

“Whatever government is in power, it will be their responsibility to fund health care,” Jason Linklater, president of the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, said by phone Wednesday.

“The truth is, this contract is just a start. The health-care staffing crisis is still in full effect. It’s not going away next year.”

MAHCP, which represents employees ranging from rural paramedics to dietitians, ratified agreements with Shared Health last week, after more than five years without a contract.

The new deal, retroactive to 2018, will expire March 2024 — alongside those between the province and the Manitoba Nurses Union, and portions of the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union and Canadian Union of Public Employees.

The groups represent some of the 56,000 Manitoba health-care workers under the Shared Health banner.

The plan to have all contracts expire simultaneously is part of a larger play to introduce a “pattern bargaining” system, which Shared Health hopes will improve health-care delivery, a spokesperson said by email Wednesday.

“This bargaining round was complicated and delayed by the need to consolidate and restructure a dysfunctional bargaining unit structure.”

In 2016, before Shared Health was installed as the centralized co-ordinating body, the province was fielding more than 200 collective agreements in its health system. There are now 36 collective agreements.

The deals are similar across the board for health-care workers, with all including retroactive pay, annual wage increases and increased supports.

“Having a more manageable number of agreements will greatly streamline future bargaining and is better for workers, employers, patients, residents and clients,” the Shared Health spokesperson said.

Linklater is hopeful the new system will free up resources, which can be reinvested in the beleaguered health system.

“Our members have been ultra clear with us that we are not going to fall behind again… So we are going to hold government to its word that negotiations will commence when they should.”

Labour leaders are communicating “regularly” and are ready to enter negotiations next year as a unified front, Linklater said.

Chief among concerns is increasing recruitment and retention by improving working conditions. The terms agreed to in the latest bargaining cycle are a step in the right direction, but there is a long way to go, Linklater added.

“We believe dealing with all four groups at the same time is going to take a significant investment,” he said.

“We all work together in the same system, shoulder to shoulder. And with us all able to negotiate at the same time, it certainly feels like we will have a significant amount of support.”

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca