Health-care support staff in rural regions reject offer, authorize strike action

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This article was published 15/08/2024 (438 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

UNIONIZED health-care support staff in two rural Manitoba health regions have voted to reject a contract offer and authorize strike action.

About 6,500 health-care aides, home-care attendants, dietary aides, housekeeping and maintenance workers in the Interlake-Eastern and Prairie Mountain health regions “overwhelmingly” voted against a tentative agreement.

Employees represented by the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union have been without a contract since April.

“I want to be recognized. I want to be appreciated… I feel that this collective agreement has nothing like that inside of it right now,” said a health-care support worker who voted against the offer.

The employee, who spoke with the Free Press on the condition of anonymity, said the contract offer does little to address recruitment and retention in the rural health regions, which already struggle with job vacancies.

“(Workers) could do something else and get the same value out of it and not have to work as hard,” said the employee, who works in the Interlake-Eastern health region.

The offer included a total 11.25 per cent wage increase over four years, weekend and evening premium increases, wage standardization and an increase in miscellaneous allowances, including travel and meals.

Recent figures released by MGEU show health-care support staff in Manitoba are among the lowest paid in Canada, based on a review of collective agreements from each province.

MGEU President Kyle Ross called the offer unfair to employees who feel they are second-rate to other health-care workers, and said a low starting wage makes the job less appealing to prospective support staff.

“(Support workers) see the deals with other groups in health care that are much more robust and there’s a lot more dollars being thrown at other groups,” he said. “When the starting wage is $17.07 for a health-care worker it’s not competitive anymore.”

A report released by MGEU in July said there were more than 700 vacant positions in the health-care aide and home-care programs in Interlake-Eastern and Prairie Mountain.

The low pay results in vacancies and a reliance on agency staff who don’t have the same intimate knowledge of clients and patients, the health-care worker said, adding the contract failed to include retention incentives similar to those recently included in offers to unionized nurses in their latest tentative agreements.

“There (are) private workers coming in to fill positions, so we’re not far from the fact that they possibly will be pushing me out of my job and replacing me if the opportunity exists for an employer to fill a shift,” she said. “It’s disheartening to see what we’re actually being valued for.”

In response to the MGEU report’s release, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said the NDP government is hoping to bring private staff back to the public system and wants to work with regional health authorities and employers to reduce Manitoba’s dependency on private agencies.

Ross said a strike is the union’s last resort and it will continue to bargain with the health authorities. No official strike date has been set yet.

nicole.buffiee@freepress.mb.ca