REGINA — Frontline health-care workers from CUPE 5430 were back at the Legislature for a rally aimed at another attempt at getting a collective agreement done for their members.
The difference this time is that CUPE members are now openly talking about job action.
“We’re ready for it. We need solidarity,” said Amy Moore, a billing clerk at the Family Medicine Unit with the SHA, who stood alongside several other CUPE members who attended the Assembly that day.
“I’m ready for a raise. I’m struggling to even make payments. There are… home care nurses that travel, that are paying $1.73 for gas, that travel as far as Balgonie, or even further, and they’re struggling more than anything without even having a raise in mileage. It’s not fair.”
The CUPE union members, who work in clerical, technical, nursing, support, and plant operations in health care, rallied in front of the Legislature during the noon hour Wednesday alongside several MLAs from the NDP. Several union members also sat in on the Assembly sitting in the afternoon.
The prevailing mood from union members was one of frustration with a lack of progress seen in addressing their issues such as pay and worker burnout.
Bashir Jalloh, president of CUPE 5430, told reporters that workers are fed up with the continued slow pace of negotiations with the province.
“We are here today because we have been bargaining for over three years,” Jalloh said.
“Our members have not received a dollar raise, a single cent raise for four years and we are at the point now that our members are beyond frustrated and they are demanding a job action. And that is why we are here today.”
Jalloh acknowledged that they had a meeting earlier that day with Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill. He said the message to Cockrill was that “bargaining has been going on for quite some time and our members are very, very frustrated, and they have made it very clear that the next step is job action.”
To take that step, Jalloh said there would have to be a strike vote. During the past two days, Jalloh said they did “what we call ‘member mobilization’ to mobilize our members, to educate our members on the process of a strike, what is a strike, what is essential services, so they know, so when we call that strike vote they will know exactly what they are going to get into.”
They do not have a definite date yet for a job action, but Jalloh said they plan to do outreach to their members in their facilities in the next few weeks.
Jalloh indicated that while there has been progress on several items, the biggest stumbling block is on the issue of the ability of the province to contract out and contract in workers, and “to move employees in and around the province without any consultations with the union. That is the sticking point here.”
They are pointing to the need to address issues of retention and keeping workers in the province.
“We, our members, we have significant short staffing, our members are burnt out, we want acknowledgement.,we are not acknowledged and we want that acknowledgement and that acknowledgement will start at what is happening at the bargaining table. We want them to come to the bargaining table to complete this round of bargaining because our members are struggling, the working conditions is not good in the workplace.”
For the time being, the CUPE union will continue bargaining efforts, with plans to meet in Saskatoon starting March 30 alongside two other health-care provider unions as well as with the Saskatchewan Association of Healthcare Organizations, which is the government bargaining agent.
“We have three weeks. We are bargaining in April.,” said Jalloh, who said if they cannot get a direction by the end of April in bargaining, that will be a “clear indication” on “what we need to talk to our members about — our next steps.”
Cockrill still focused on getting a settlement done
In speaking to reporters at the Legislature Wednesday, Minister Cockrill acknowledged that talks have been ongoing.
“So bargaining right now is open at all of our healthcare tables. We’re back with the provider unions, which includes CUPE 5430 on Monday,” said Cockrill.
Cockrill did confirm talks with CUPE 5430 did happen that day and called it one of the “more productive meetings that I’ve had the opportunity to have with CUPE we had this morning.”
He characterized the meeting as “starting to get down to the nuts and bolts of, you know, being frank, being very frank with each other about, you know, what they’re concerned about.“
Cockrill said he also raised concerns about “taking away some of the artificial boundaries that exist, you know, within our agreements, because the SHA is a combination of former regional health authorities and some of those boundaries still exist.”
He said those boundaries “don’t work very well for patient care in many examples,” pointing to instances of communities 10 or 15 km apart where staff “can’t move in between those communities. That doesn’t really make a lot of sense for families and residents of those communities.”
“And so, again, those are some of the areas that I expect that we’ll have some pretty intensive discussions on,” he said.
As for the threat of a potential job action, Cockrill said there would need to be discussions around essential services if that were to occur, but added “that’s not really our focus.”
“We want to get a deal done because, again, at the end of the day, you know, for the patients in this province, wherever they live, whether it’s Regina, Saskatoon, or any other community in the province, we, you know, they need to be able, they need to have certainty in the service that’s offered in their community. And so our priority is going to be getting a deal done. And that’s what we’re going to spend our energy on.”
