New collective agreement for nurses in 2024

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/01/2024 (607 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Nurses Union campaigned during the recent provincial election with the slogan, “Vote like your life depends on it.” Now that the election is over, another campaign is underway.

“What a perfect day for radical change” is one of the union’s new slogans in 2024, with its collective agreement about to expire.

“While we saw a change in government when the NDP won the election last October, we know that bargaining will still be tough given how far behind the previous government set us back,” the MNU says on its website.

The 12,000 nurses last ratified a seven-year deal with their employer in late 2021, after being without a contract for four years, during which time the then-Tory government imposed a civil service wage freeze.

They were then run ragged on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic that exposed staffing shortages in a health-care system that had been cut close to the bone.

The current contract — which expires March 31 — included wide-ranging improvements for all nurses, including retroactive wage increases and general salary increases ranging from 1.25 per cent in 2017 to two per cent in 2023.

In 2024, the nurses are looking for more than money.

“Nurses need to feel safe, valued and respected,” MNU president Darlene Jackson said Wednesday. “A change in culture is what we’re really hoping for.”

The last time they were at the bargaining table in 2020 and 2021, respect was sorely lacking, the union said.

This time, nurses are demanding it, as well as a greater understanding of the issues, including staffing shortages, heavy workloads and the need for mental health supports.

Mandatory overtime, burnout and a lack of work-life balance have driven nurses out of the public sector and left those remaining on the front lines stretched even thinner, said Jackson.

“Manitoba nurses have been out there with their fingers in the dyke holding that flood back,” she said, adding more needs to be done to physically protect nurses. “We’re going to be looking for improvements for safety and addressing violence in workplace.”

When asked if the Kinew government had any message to nurses returning to the bargaining table, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara (also a nurse) said they have the backing of government.

“Not only do we have their backs now, we’re going to have their backs in the future,” Asagwara said Wednesday at a media event at St. Boniface Hospital.

While Asagwara and Premier Wab Kinew have repeatedly praised nurses for their dedication and said they’re on board with changing the culture, managers need to get the message, too, said Jackson.

“It’s not every manager or director in the system, but there are areas where we do need to look,” she said without citing specifics. “In some areas, it’s gotten better, but we’re still hearing from nurses every day that a plan is made without input from staff.”

The NDP government is listening, Asagwara said. “Our team has been committed to taking steps in the right direction.”

It started with the Oct. 24, 2023, open letter to those working in health care signed by the health minister and premier, promising to take better care of them.

Asagwara said the government has already acted on some of the recommendations from the front lines, starting with the discharge of hospital patients to their homes and communities seven days a week, instead of the previous five.

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The move is freeing up hospital beds, which relieves wait times in emergency rooms that get jammed up with patients waiting for a bed and ER staff who are overwhelmed, officials said.

“That’s something health-care workers, nurses and front-line staff have been asking for for years, and we actioned that right away,” the health minister said after announcing a plan to increase the number of staffed beds at St. Boniface Hospital to relieve pressure on its ER.

Asagwara pointed to the “listening tour” with the premier that started at the Grace Hospital in December, and stops at hospitals across the province in coming months, to hear more about the challenges front-line staff face and their potential solutions.

“I hope the listening tour does help,” said Jackson.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.