Date: March 12, 2025
Sisters, Brothers, and Friends,
On behalf of the SEIU-West bargaining committee a huge thank you to our members who have been holding information pickets across the province! We’ve had information pickets at Nokomis Health Center, Oliver Lodge and St. Joseph’s Home, Royal University Hospital, Saskatoon City Hospital, FW Wigmore Hospital, Cypress Regional Hospital, Biggar & District Health Care, Leader Integrated Care, Eston Integrated Care, Providence Place, Moose Jaw Homecare, Moose Jaw Special Care Home, and St. Paul’s Hospital. Keep it up! Help your unit executive plan your next information picket—members demonstrating their frustration with the delay in bargaining is IMPORTANT! It shows that you are paying attention and support your bargaining committee! There are more coming in March and April—keep an eye on the SEIU-West website.
Your SEIU-West bargaining committee met with the employer for the week of March 3-7, 2025 in Saskatoon.
Following up from joint efforts of SEIU-West, CUPE and SGEU to address the immediate monetary issues of our members while continuing to negotiate improvements to the collective agreement; we were unable to reach agreement with SAHO. We continued to work on proposals that would bring us closer to meeting at the ‘common’ bargaining table with our coalition partners and an eventual tentative agreement.
The SEIU-West bargaining committee extensively reviewed any outstanding individual SEIU-WEST proposals that required a response. Over the course of over a year of bargaining and responding to the SAHO proposal package (which proposed a significant re-writing of our Collective Agreement), it takes consideration and effort to ensure that no proposal goes without a response. This part of the process is important to ensure that we have completely reviewed the package and know where the parties stand in advance of moving to the common table or making a declaration of impasse. It also helps us ensure that any third parties, such as a mediator, who might be required to assist the parties in the future know where SEIU-West stands on the issues.
We responded to a number of SAHO proposals and have maintained our position to uphold or improve our collective agreement language. We have focused on improving the grievance/arbitration process to ensure that it is fair and just to our members, that it’s clear and makes sense with more timely results.
While we appreciate that sometimes bargaining updates don’t provide the details of bargaining sessions—they aren’t intended to. They are to provide members with an update on where the negotiations are heading, what are the issues affecting the bargaining table, and what the Bargaining Committee is doing to address member concerns. It is not a verbatim transcript or set of minutes.
As regular collective bargaining proceeds, we continue to prepare for essential services bargaining. Our Bargaining Committee will be reaching out to a sample of our members to talk about their jobs and work environment to ensure that we understand the ‘essential nature’ of your work. We’ve had some initial discussions with our coalition partners, SGEU and CUPE, regarding essential services and those discussions will continue in the coming months.
Our next set of bargaining dates are April 14-17 however, the necessary work continues behind the scenes until then.
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