Health workers’ strike vote shows ‘profound level of disappointment’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/01/2025 (302 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Health support workers are upset they’ve had to vote overwhelmingly to go on strike under an NDP government, little more than a year and a half after doing so under the Tories.

Allied health workers represented by the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals have voted 96 per cent in favour of a strike mandate. They voted 99 per cent in favour of a strike mandate in 2023, after working five years without a contract. No strike date has been set.

The union says retention, understaffing, increasing workloads and the lack of competitive wages are some of the main issues in both the current labour negotiations and the earlier ones.

“I think that 96 per cent shows that profound level of disappointment,” said union president Jason Linklater on Wednesday.

“I think what sticks out the most to me is it indicates a profound lack of trust. The health minister has publicly stated that retention is the most important step in fixing allied health. A vote like this indicates that there is not a belief that there’s an intention here.”

Linklater said the negotiations which have led up to the strike vote are particularly upsetting because they were hoping the government of Wab Kinew would be different than the Brian Pallister and Heather Stefanson governments.

“This is probably the most disappointing part for everyone,” he said. “This is the identical situation we were in with the previous government, in that Shared Health has a complete inability to fix anything if resources are not made available by government.

“Manitobans deserve better, they were promised better, and I think our message here is that it is not too late to turn the bus around and start making right decisions and start caring for the people who care for Manitobans.”

The union represents more than 7,000 workers in more than 50 professions including rural paramedics, respiratory therapists, mental health clinicians, and lab and imaging technologists.

It took 15 months of negotiations and a strike deadline before a six-year agreement was reached in 2023, after five years of working without a contract. That contract, settled just weeks before a provincial election, included a general wage increase of 8.35 per cent and other improvements.

Kathleen Cook, the Progressive Conservative health critic, said the 96 per cent strike mandate “is a clear reflection of this government’s failure to deliver the relief and respect they promised to health-care workers.

“The reality is simple: the NDP has no credible plan to fix the staffing crisis in health care. Front-line workers are burning out, and instead of real solutions, this government offers empty promises and delay tactics.

“The NDP needs to stop making excuses and start fixing the crisis they claimed they could solve.”

When asked about the strike vote, Kinew said he’s hoping for a deal.

“We’ve been staffing up, I think everyone who has been working in health care sees that and that’s the first step to fixing health care,” he said.

“Allied health workers are super valuable. I hope they notice that I try to say allied health all the time, when we’re talking about health care staffing, and that’s just one small example of the emphasis and the respect that we put in for the work that they do.”

A Shared Health spokesman said it “is committed to the successful negotiation of a new and fair collective agreement for our province’s professional technical/paramedical sector employees.”

The spokesman wouldn’t comment publicly about negotiations.

“We remain at the bargaining table and continue to work towards a new collective agreement for all of these valued staff.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca