Union sets March 7 strike deadline for more than 7,000 health-care professionals

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A Manitoba health-care union has set a strike deadline of March 7 for more than 7,000 employees who’ve been without a contract for almost a year.

The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, whose members include paramedics in rural areas, lab and diagnostic technologists and physiotherapists, said it expects a strike would cause significant delays and disruptions to some services.

“We don’t want there to be a strike,” MAHCP president Jason Linklater said Friday. “Without doubt, an allied health strike would be extremely disruptive. It hasn’t been seen before, and maybe that’s why it’s not being taken as seriously as it should be by the employer and government, because they don’t understand what the impacts are.”

MAHCP members voted 96 per cent in favour of a strike mandate in January, the union said. Negotiations began in April and continued this week.

No additional bargaining dates were booked as of Thursday night, Linklater said.

“It is sincerely my hope that they reach out and continue to negotiate, and to come to a deal before allied health professionals throughout the province have to exercise job action,” he said.

MAHCP predicted a strike would cause delays or disruptions to a range of services, including some surgical procedures, lab and diagnostic tests, radiation treatments at CancerCare Manitoba, home care, non-emergency patient transports, some midwife appointments and non-crisis mental-health and addictions services.

“It could set Manitoba back for years when you take into consideration wait lists, wait times for surgeries, tests, different types of treatments, different types of assessments and, particularly, emergency rooms where there’s already extremely high wait times,” Linklater said.

“All of our specialized professionals provide different types of services in all of those areas.”

Agreements allow health authorities to schedule a minimum number of employees in each service area to ensure essential services continue during a strike, MAHCP said.

“Those essential service agreements ensure those life and limb issues for patients are going to be addressed,” Linklater said. “When someone calls 911 in any area of rural Manitoba, it will be responded to.

“It is all of those different types of things that could be considered non-elective, or different types of appointments and tests that can wait, that will be backed up. Those are really the major contributor to those extended wait times across the board.”

MAHCP is negotiating individual contracts with Shared Health, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and Northern Health Region. Linklater said a department within Shared Health is responsible for negotiating on behalf of the employers.

“Shared Health, on behalf of all health system employers, remains committed to bargaining in good faith to reach a fair agreement for our province’s professional technical/paramedical sector employees,” a spokesperson said. “We remain hopeful an agreement will be reached. Essential service agreements are being reviewed to ensure safe patient/resident/client care.”

While Linklater declined to provide specific details, he said the union is seeking improvements to help recruit and retain employees amid chronic staff shortages.

“Essentially, from a total monetary perspective, we’re apart at the table,” he said. “We know that we are in an allied health staffing crisis, and the government and employer don’t seem to be taking that seriously based on the type of monetary value that they’re offering at the table.

“What’s there at the moment will not fix growing wait times in diagnostics, emergency medical services, mental health, developmental support for kids and a whole host of other services that our 50 different professions provide to Manitobans.”

Linklater said the union asked the employer to go back to the government and request additional funding for allied health, but the employer declined.

MAHCP said its members are the last public health sector in Manitoba working without a current contract.

It is the second time in two years the union has set a strike deadline.

Members were without a contract for more than five years when they were poised to take job action in June 2023.

A tentative deal, later ratified, was reached just before the deadline. The contract, retroactive to 2018, expired April 1, 2024.

“I certainly didn’t think we’d end up at this point again, but maybe that is the only way to show the value that they provide to the system,” Linklater said.

“We believe that this government got here based on health-care promises, and that failing to get a contract in place with allied health professionals is a fundamental breach of trust that people put in them when they elected them to office. They have the ability to instruct and fund the employer to do the right thing here, and we absolutely believe that’s what they should do.”

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca