18,000 health care staff to vote on strike action

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This article was published 06/08/2021 (1530 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Thousands of health-care support staff are preparing for a strike vote, two months after Manitoba nurses did the same.

About 18,000 health support staff, represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, are set to hold a strike vote this month because bargaining has stalled, the union says. The employer disagrees: Shared Health says bargaining is still in the early stages and any talk of a strike is “premature.”

The union has been meeting with its members daily leading up to the Aug. 18 strike vote.

“They feel through COVID they’ve been disrespected. Calling them heroes and treating them like zeroes at the table,” said CUPE Local 204 president Debbie Boissonneault, who was meeting with staff at the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s distribution site in St. Boniface Friday.

The goal, she said, is not to go on strike, but to advance contract talks.

In June, 12,000 Manitoba Nurses’ Union members voted 98 per cent in favour of a strike and later reached an agreement to secure a contract through binding arbitration if bargaining is unsuccessful. Details of the agreement haven’t been shared with the union for health-care support staff, but they want to make sure their members are also being treated fairly, said Lee McLeod, regional director for CUPE Manitoba.

“That offer (for binding arbitration) hasn’t been extended to health-care support workers, and obviously we don’t want to see people left behind.”

Fairness and compensation are key issues that bargaining hasn’t resolved, McLeod said, adding home-care workers have “vastly inferior benefits” compared with other health-care workers.

The support workers have put themselves at risk during the pandemic and have told the union they are exhausted and demoralized, but McLeod said they aren’t being treated fairly in bargaining.

“There are many outstanding issues, and it’s the consensus of the bargaining group that they’re not being treated seriously at the bargaining table.”

The employees support patients, nurses and other health-care professionals in hospitals and care homes under Shared Health, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, as well as the Northern and Southern health authorities. About 5,000 of the unionized employees are home-care workers.

Like nurses, support workers have been without a contract since 2017 and are facing the prospect of no salary increases for the next two years under wage-freeze legislation the provincial government introduced four years ago. That legislation, which wasn’t proclaimed into law, has since been declared unconstitutional. The government appealed the decision to the Manitoba’s Court of Appeal. A decision isn’t expected for months.

The union has another bargaining date set on Aug. 17, a day before the strike vote. Talks started in December 2020.

In a statement, a Shared Health spokesman said the organization hasn’t delayed the bargaining process.

“We fully respect union processes and bargaining tools but any talk of strike action seems premature. All of our health care support workers should have the benefit of a new, fair and long-term agreement, and we are fully committed to pursuing this shared goal at the bargaining table.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay