May 2, 2025
Sisters, Brothers, and Friends,
Your SEIU-West Bargaining Committee met with the SAHO Bargaining Committee during the week of April 14-17, 2025.
The SEIU-West Bargaining Committee is focused on maintaining our proposals regarding the improvements in collective agreement language you wanted, in the face of SAHO demands for concessions.
We have provided proposals that focus on the member’s right to have union representation in discussions that may lead to discipline, holding the Employer to its obligation to follow the rules of progressive discipline, and maintaining our right (as well as our legal obligation) to represent our members no matter where they may be working.
We want to improve the grievance procedure to make it more efficient and effective for our members to resolve issues. We are discussing the creation of a provincial dispute resolution committee to improve the timeliness and the consistency of the employer’s discipline process and the union’s grievance procedures.
SEIU-West refused to agree to the concessions SAHO was demanding from the current language on various leaves identified in Article 15. This was the subject of much discussion over the four days we were scheduled to meet with SAHO.
We have met with our coalition partners, SGEU and CUPE 5430, to develop our common strategy to move SAHO to a common table to focus on monetary related items.
We have also scheduled a meeting with the SHA to discuss what they have done to assess their essential services process. The Employer was clear that this is NOT commencing bargaining essential services, so our desire is to gather information that will complement the work we are doing to identify essential duties.
Our bargaining committee is meeting on May 14-16 to confirm our opposition to concessions SAHO and the Employer are demanding on some fundamental language, for example, eliminating our offer and accept call-in system, continuing our work identifying what are essential duties, and re-affirming our members message that they are demonstrating they prepared to do more, a lot more, to get a fair and reasonable agreement that they can accept.
If you have collective agreement questions or issues, contact the Member Resource Center at 1-888-999-7348 ext. 1, email [email protected], or complete the Contact Us form on our website, www.seiuwest.ca.
You can support your Bargaining Committee by visiting our Backbone of Healthcare page and sending a letter to Andrew Will, the Chief Executive Officer of the SHA, as well as both Saskatchewan Ministers of Health, telling them it’s time for a fair deal for healthcare workers. You can also plan to host or attend an Info Picket in support of bargaining, details can be found by clicking here.
In Solidarity on behalf of the SEIU-West Bargaining Committee
Barbara Cape
President
SEIU-West
________________________________________
Your SEIU-West SAHO Provincial Bargaining Committee:
CHR: Janice Platzke (SEIU-West Treasurer) • FHHR: Brenda Berry, Barbara Bubyn • HHR: Colleen Denniss • SHR: Rhonda Bzdel, Chris Clark, Jeanne Javinal, Carla Saworski, Charlene Sarafin • Extendicare: Kevin Martin • Staff: Bob Laurie (Dir. of Bargaining and Contract Enforcement), Russell Doell (Deputy Dir. of Bargaining and Contract Enforcement • President: Barbara Cape
Please click here for a printable version of this bargaining update.