Date: August 9, 2024
Sisters, Brothers, and Friends,
Your SEIU-West Bargaining Committee met with the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations (SAHO) and the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA), including affiliates, on August 6-8 to exchange proposals.
We continued our comprehensive review of the Employer’s proposal package and providing the Union’s responses. The Employer’s latest package does not appear to vary in any significant manner from its initial proposal package tabled last year. As you have read in Update #10 (and others!), the SAHO/SHA proposals demand significant concessions in our current Collective Agreement language. The Employer side has not shared the costing of the concessions; it appears they simply do not believe you deserve the benefits of the hard-fought Collective Agreement language that you currently enjoy. The theme of their proposal package is for the Employer to increase its control over how, what, when, and where you work and to minimize your ability to have any influence over those factors.
To recap:
- Eliminating our call-in language and electronic call-in. The Employer’s proposal is to use ‘relief workers’ who must either bid on the potential hours that they might be scheduled for, or be scheduled according to the “pro-forma” you must submit—but there are no guarantees, only that people must wait by the phone or check their online schedule constantly on the chance that they are assigned work. This makes absolutely no sense with the ongoing implementation of AIMS.
- Eliminating the guarantee of where you work and what you do. The Employer proposals would give them the right, once you report to work, to assign you to different classifications and work, and/or work in different locations, including different communities, without notice and without any compensation for the changes.
- The Employer wants to be able to contract in workers at their discretion, with no restrictions on what the contracted in workers would do or what they would be paid. The Employer wants to contract out work without any restrictions such as offering the work to bargaining unit members first. Current language setting out the rules on contracting out would be eliminated.
- If you were not offered call-in or overtime work because of an Employer error, rather than paying you for the missed hours, the Employer proposes employees pay for the Employer’s contract violation by working an additional shift as supernumerary in order to be paid, no matter how long it takes to schedule that correction shift.
We have met with the Chief Human Resources Officer of the SHA and the Executive Director for the Government of Saskatchewan Health Human Resources strategy to make sure they know about the challenges facing healthcare workers. We’ve talked about how the critical staffing shortage affects not just one classification but ALL classifications. We let them know the compounding effect not having enough staff in rural and urban long-term care/acute/homecare and how that has burned out/beat up staff who are leaving the healthcare system.
We all know there is a provincial election in October. We are in a unique position to elect our bosses and to pressure them change and improve the healthcare system. And those bosses can positively change our healthcare system by improving the conditions of our work, listening to the frontline workers who know the system inside and out and have the expertise and experience to make the difference, and “walk the walk” for better healthcare, not just talk the talk as politicians do.
Change doesn’t happen if we all just wait around. If we want things to change for the better, we need to build a movement and drive that change ourselves. We will be meeting with SAHO and the SHA/affiliates in late September. Let’s send them a message they need to change-for the better!
It's time to stand up SEIU-West members! If you want to see real change in our healthcare system and Collective Agreement, we want you to share this update with your coworkers, to wear purple on Wednesdays, and we want you to make a plan to vote in October and share your plan (not your vote) with us. Stay tuned to the website and social media where we’re showing everyone that SEIU-West members are the backbone of healthcare.
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.
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
Click here for a printable version of this Bargaining Update
