Disclaimer: the following information is based on what SEIU-West found on publicly available federal government websites. This information is subject to change as it comes from outside sources. We will update this post further as information becomes available.
Pinned
If you are an SEIU-West member working for the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) and you receive a communication from your employer indicating that you owe them money back for an N/52nds overpayment, please:
Info pickets provide an opportunity for SEIU-West members to send a message to their employer and to the general public, that bargaining needs to progress and SEIU-West members deserve a fair contract!
Since 1919, Canadians across the country have gathered at commemorative ceremonies to observe a moment of silence at the 11th hour of the 11th the day of the 11th month to honor members of our armed forces who have died in the line of duty.
An Act to amend the Holidays Act (Remembrance Day), known as Bill C-311, received royal assent on March 1, 2018 making Remembrance Day a legal holiday throughout Canada.
However, it has yet to be recognized as a statutory holiday in every province.
Due to the distribution of legislative powers in Canada, the provinces and territories determine which days are public holidays for the vast majority of employees.
While some employers in those provinces where it is not a statutory holiday choose to give their employees Remembrance Day off, they are not required to do so.
In Manitoba, employers are not required to pay employees who do not work on Remembrance Day.
According to the Nova Scotia government, employees who work on the holiday will be entitled to receive another day off with pay agreed upon between the employee and the employer.
As for Ontario and Quebec, Remembrance Day is not recognized as a statutory holiday but some employers give employees time off.
Rest assured, SEIU-West and the Labour movement will keep fighting to ensure that ALL workers across Canada will be able to observe this important holiday.
For more information on this, click here and here.
For Immediate Release - November 7, 2019
Moose Jaw – SEIU-West members were talking to the public outside of Moose Jaw City Hall today to discuss the day to day challenges they face in the health care sector.
For Immediate Release - November 6, 2019
Moose Jaw – SEIU-West members and their supporters will be sharing information with the public at Moose Jaw City Hall on November 7, 2019.
For immediate release – November 6, 2019
Today, on CBO Worker Appreciation Day, SGEU, SEIU-West and CUPE thank the thousands of people who work at Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) across the province for the vital services they provide to Saskatchewan people in need. The three unions also call on the provincial government to commit to providing multi-year funding for Saskatchewan CBOs.
Join us as we celebrate November 6 – Community Worker Appreciation Day. Many SEIU-West members work in the Community-Based (CBO) Sector; they work in residential/group home settings and provide services for the vulnerable, they assist with mobile crisis services, they provide day programs for the disabled and support their independent living, they work in child care programs, and they engage with clients in addictions counseling /treatment programs. 
It’s important to recognize this group whose work is crucial to the well-being of communities across the province. The work of CBO’s is especially vital today because they go to great lengths to cushion the effects of government cuts and understaffing, often at great personal cost.
In recognition of their valued work, SEIU-West invites you to participate in the Community Worker Appreciation Day Contest! Complete this word search for your chance to win some awesome prizes:
- Tickets to the Festival of Trees
- Tickets to the Stand! Movie
- A variety of gift passes to movies and restaurants
Email [email protected] with your answer by November 13, and you’ll be entered to win!
SEIU-West is thrilled to celebrate the hardworking MRTs of our health care team.
You may have met a MRT during procedures they perform like angiograms (usually of the brain), special IV line insertions (like PICC’s), Ports, and Hickman lines, feeding tube placements, and biopsies, to name a few. MRTs are there to explain these procedures to patients and often start IVs. MRTs also assist during procedures by providing patient care, driving the x-ray equipment to guide the doctors, and scrubbing in with doctors to assist with the procedure. Cleanup and re-prep is an important aspect of their day as well as there are often many procedures and new challenges each day.
The work of an MRT is crucial for our health care system as MRTs perform imaging and radiation-related therapy, which is so often needed by patients. MRTs deliver safe and professional care by relying on the skills and experiences they’ve gained in their frontline work.
In recognition of their valued work, SEIU-West invites you to participate in the MRT Week Contest! Complete this crossword for your chance to win some awesome prizes:
- Tickets to the Festival of Trees
- Tickets to the Stand! Movie
- A variety of gift passes to movies and restaurants
Email [email protected] with your answer by November 13, and you’ll be entered to win!
At our 10 am Virtual Town Hall (VTH) meeting today, we experienced technical difficulties and lost the sound. Our providers are presently investigating the cause. There will be another VTH meeting this evening (November 5) at 7 pm. We will begin roadshow meetings across the province starting November 6. Please join us tonight for the VTH meeting or at a future meeting at your facility. We will be posting all questions received through the VTH meetings on our website under President’s Message.
We are sorry for the inconvenience to all this am.
Two vacancies have arisen on the SEIU-West Young Workers Committee so we are inviting interested members to submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) form to fill this vacancy.
The successful applicants will have the opportunity to expand their union involvement and activism in this position, and play an active role in engaging young workers into our union.
If you are interested in applying, please complete this online form or this pdf EOI form and submit it to Barb Cape’s attention by Wednesday, November 13 at 1:00pm, 2019 via email: [email protected] or fax: 306 652 1392.
For Immediate Release - October 31, 2019
Saskatoon – Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe received an open letter today from the Service Employees International Union-West (SEIU-West), urging him to stand up for Saskatchewan health care providers. Based on statements Mr. Moe used in his recent “New Deal with Canada” letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and in the October 23rd Throne Speech, SEIU-West called on him to improve the current state of health care with “a New Deal with Health Providers”.
The open letter highlights critical short-staffing issues in Saskatchewan’s health sector, including at Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital, described in the letter as “the province’s major tertiary care centre, and a critical resource for the adjacent Children’s Hospital.” The letter asks how Moe’s government proposes “to recruit and retain health providers to work in understaffed facilities that are experiencing shockingly high rates of workplace injury and violence.”
“The Throne Speech talks about investing in public services to provide a better life for Saskatchewan people,” Cape added. “We urge the Premier to keep this promise, by investing in the people who provide the vast majority of front-line care.”
“Due to crushing workloads, ever increasing complex care, and less staff to work, the health care system is set to fail,” continued Cape. “We have asked the public we serve to magnify our calls for safety in the care environment. We need to stop the cycle of understaffed/overworked/injured by creating a health care work environment that attracts people to a health care career. We challenge our Premier to take the initial steps and to respond to our call for real human resource planning.”
SEIU-West’s 12,000 health care providers have been without a contract since March 31, 2017. In spring 2019, SEIU-West members strongly rejected the offer of 0%/0%/1%/2%/2% the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations (SAHO) proposed.
“SAHO is in constant communication with the government during bargaining,” said SEIU-West President Barb Cape, the letter’s author. “No matter what initiatives we’ve brought to the table, SAHO maintains the government’s mandate of rollbacks - two years of zero wage increases and a contract that doesn’t even cover the cost of living. Our members are clear that this is unacceptable. They know the Premier and other members of the legislature gave themselves a 5.8% pay increase over the last two years. They know the base salary for Saskatchewan MLAs has increased by over 50% since the Saskatchewan Party first formed government in 2007. All our members want is a Collective Agreement that lets them afford to work safely in health care.”
SEIU-West represents over 13,000 people across Saskatchewan. They include people who work in health care, education, municipalities, community-based organizations, retirement homes and other sectors. They are joined by one colour – purple – and one union – SEIU-West. Purple works in our communities! Visit PurpleWorks.ca to find out more about SEIU-West members.
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For more information, contact:
Jolomi Gagar, Project Coordinator
Phone: 306-652-1011 ext. 2225
On October 31, 2019, SEIU-West President Barb Cape sent the below open letter to Premier Scott Moe. Click here to view the signed letter.
Dear Premier Moe:
RE: A New Deal with Health Providers
On October 22, the day after the federal election, you issued an open letter to Prime Minister Trudeau titled “A New Deal with Canada”.
In it, you issued an urgent challenge to the Prime Minister to make good on his commitments to better address the needs and concerns of Saskatchewan people.
In that same spirit, I issue this urgent challenge to you: be fair to those who care.
Over the past several years, your government, through the health sector employers it mandates and funds, has neglected the basic needs of thousands of workers who provide the vast majority of front-line health care services to Saskatchewan people. This strategy has resulted in chronic understaffing in the health care sector, to the detriment of patients, clients and residents. I ask you now to put care first.
In ratification votes held this spring in the former Saskatoon, Five Hills, Cypress and Heartland Health regions, SEIU-West’s 12,000 members soundly rejected the employer’s offer of 0%/0%/1%/2%/2%. In bargaining since then, the employer, with direction from the Ministry of Health, has stubbornly refused to budge from this offer.
The sense of frustration and alienation among our members is now greater than it has been at any point since 2008, when the Government of Saskatchewan introduced essential services legislation which seriously undermined bargaining rights in the public sector—legislation later struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
In the Throne Speech, your government committed “to invest in important government services that provide a better quality of life for all Saskatchewan people.” Those are pretty words, but we need action, not words.
It’s time, Mr. Premier, for a new deal with SEIU-West health care providers.
The Throne Speech mentions a new plan for growth, but says little about planning for the effects of growth. If, as promised, Saskatchewan’s population grows to 1.4 million by 2030, its health care needs will grow as well. Do you have a plan to attract and retain the additional health providers needed to meet the growing health care needs of this larger population? Shouldn’t we begin working on that plan now?
The speech boasts of facilities built and professionals hired, but doesn’t even acknowledge the need for additional health care providers in order to run these facilities. It ignores a basic fact: health care in Saskatchewan, including long-term care and home care, depends on the hard work of tens of thousands of workers who are not physicians or registered nurses. The wages of these workers have not kept pace with the rising cost of living. The intransigent bargaining mandate directed to the employers by your Ministry of Health offers current and prospective health care providers no hope that this will change. It is a glaring example of the lack of institutional, financial, educational and emotional support currently faced by health care provider employees. They have consistently expressed to me their overwhelming frustration at being asked by your government to take zeroes, particular when Members of the Legislative Assembly (whose pay has increased by more than 50% since 2007) are not being asked to do the same.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority’s list of “hard to recruit” positions is growing. Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon--the province’s major tertiary care centre, and a critical resource for the adjacent Children’s Hospital—is reporting dangerous levels of overcrowding and understaffing. Many of our rural units report that the Employer simply cannot recruit Continuing Care Assistants to care for residents which lends to a fear of bed closures. How do you propose to recruit and retain health providers to work in understaffed facilities that are experiencing shockingly high rates of workplace injury and violence?
Premier Moe, if you are serious about providing a better quality of life for all Saskatchewan people, here is what you could do right away:
1. Re-evaluate the staffing levels in the health care system (acute, long-term care, homecare and community services) and look at investing more in front-line staff to provide the quality hands-on care needed;
2. For example, through your Health Minister, direct those bargaining on behalf of the Saskatchewan Health Authority that they are no longer bound by the mandate containing zeroes, and urge them to bring to the table a more innovative offer that better meets the needs of our members who are health care providers to ensure a timely address to ongoing retention and recruitment challenges.
I am ready to meet with you at any time to discuss how we can move forward together on these issues. You have indicated that you are Standing Up for Saskatchewan. Our members are ready for you to demonstrate your commitment.
Sincerely,
Barbara Cape
President
SEIU-West
Save the date for the upcoming Telephone Town Hall meetings!
Given our experience with SAHO and the Employers at conciliation we would like to announce another four live and interactive virtual town hall meetings for our health care sector members.
The calls will be taking place on Monday, November 4 at 2 pm and 7 pm; another set of calls will occur on Tuesday, November 5 at 10 am and 7 pm. 
Your SEIU-West SAHO bargaining committee is looking forward to providing you information about the status of SAHO bargaining and our desire to get direction from our membership. Extendicare members are invited to participate as well.
You will be receiving a reminder call from us in advance of the telephone town hall meeting dates.
During the Town hall meeting, you will be able to ask any questions you might have.
How do you get on the call? All you have to do is pick up your phone when we call.
If for some reason you are unable to pick up when we call you, instructions on how to join will be left on your voicemail (if you have voicemail or answering machine).
Visit our events page for more details.