Same contract, different advice

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This article was published 30/08/2024 (429 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After being advised by their union to accept a proposed agreement, health-care support workers with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, Shared Health and Southern Health rejected it and authorized strike action.

“I’m happy that we, the members, see our self worth and voted no,” said union member and former Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 204 president Debbie Boissonneault.

Earlier this month, 6,500 community and facility support staff at the Prairie Mountain and Interlake-Eastern health regions, who belong to the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union, voted against the same contract offer.

The proposed deal included a one per cent, across-the-board wage increase retroactive to April 1, and annual increases totalling 11.25 per cent, with 2.5 per cent in the first year, 2.75 per cent in the second year and three per cent in each of the final two years of the contract. The collective agreement expired March 31. No strike date has been set.

A spokesman for Shared Health said it is important to note that health care is an essential service, and agreements are in place “to provide care to our patients/clients/residents should job action take place.”

CUPE 204, which represents approximately 16,000 support staff at Shared Health, Northern Health, Southern Health and the WRHA, had recommended its members accept the offer. Three groups did: two bargaining units in Northern Health and Southern Health’s facility support workers — laundry aides, housekeeping aides, unit clerks, maintenance workers and security guards.

The rest of the facility and community support workers — who provide hands-on care for patients and residents as health-care aides, home care attendants, rehabilitation aides, and recreation aides — rejected the four-year deal.

“CUPE presented this agreement to our members for a vote because it is consistent with recent settlements in the public sector,” said union spokesman David Jacks.

The MGEU advised its members to reject the proposal.

“It just doesn’t go far enough,” MGEU president Kyle Ross said Friday.

“When you have vacancy rates at 50 per cent or greater, it takes a little extra to solve that problem,” said Ross. “It’s a big issue right now for our members. The wages haven’t kept up with inflation and the jobs are just no longer competitive out in those rural areas, where you can go work at the lumber yard or the bank or many other places that don’t have the same challenges as health care and it’s an easier job for more money.”

Ross said the starting wage for Manitoba support workers is $17.07 an hour and the lowest in Canada.

Staff morale, burnout, retention, and compensation are issues CUPE members want addressed, Jacks said.

Both unions are returning to the bargaining table Sept. 5. A spokesperson for Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara declined to comment other than to say: “We’re going to keep working it out at the table.”

University of Manitoba labour studies associate Prof. Jesse Hajer couldn’t say why CUPE would recommend the contract offer to its members.

“My understanding is that a vast majority of health-care support workers, over 90 per cent, rejected the offer, including both CUPE and MGEU members. The offer is inferior to what some other Manitoba health-care workers have recently received, and these occupations are facing similar recruitment and retention problem to higher paying health professions,” Hajer said, noting some of the starting salaries are below a living wage.

Public sector unions voting to strike indicate the bloom is off the rose for Premier Wab Kinew’s NDP government, said one observer.

“This is part of the ending of the honeymoon period for this government,” said University of Winnipeg political science Prof. Malcolm Bird. The labour unions are closely aligned to the NDP and dealing with limited resources, a large debt and “huge demands” on the health system.

“This is when governing gets really difficult,” Bird said. “This is going to be increasingly difficult for this government because of its connections and support of unionized public sector workers.”

Progressive Conservative labour critic Jodie Byram (Agassiz) said the NDP still hasn’t presented a plan to recruit, retain, and train health-care workers in Manitoba, or introduced incentive programs that are competitive with what is on offer in other provinces.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca