Collective agreement reached between Cheshire Homes of Saskatoon and SEIU-West
After a protracted but productive round of collective bargaining SEIU-West and Cheshire reached a collective agreement which includes significant improvements to the terms of employment and working conditions for the SEIU-West members employed at Cheshire Homes.
The SEIU-West bargaining committee was able to secure an agreement which includes:
- Enrolling all employees into a new Employer paid extended health benefits plan.
- Overtime now has to be paid after 8 hours of work in a day
- No employee can be scheduled by the Employer to work more than 6 consecutive days without days off
- An increase to the rate of accrual for sick time from 8 to 10 hours per month
- An extension of the WCB top up from 6 months to 1 year
- The ability to carry over a week of vacation per year at the employee’s option
- Improvements to the call in and overtime language to ensure simplicity and fairness
- And, last but not least, a 3% wage increase retroactive to the April, 1 2020 (a year of retro on all paid hours – sick hours, overtime hours, everything)
This is the third round of bargaining where the members at Cheshire have come to the table seeking improvements to make their jobs more meaningful and sustainable.
The first time we made less progress than we hoped, due to serious instability in the management structure at Cheshire Homes.
The second time we had to postpone our plans and even accept some temporary roll backs due to instability in the Employer’s funding. But the members didn’t give up and came back to bargaining with the same plans and even greater determination and conviction that with hard work we would make progress sooner or later. We succeeded, largely because we insisted that the Employer work as hard as we did to reach a deal.
Congratulations are well deserved for the members on the committee and for the overwhelming majority of members who showed up to vote in favor of a fair deal!