UNA urges members to ratify AHS recommendations

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on January 12, 2022.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

The United Nurses of Alberta negotiating committee recommended to the delegates across the province on Friday to ratify the recommendations from the mediator for a new collective agreement with Alberta Health Services and other health care employers.
“There is a one per increase as of October 1, 2021, so there will be retroactivity from October 1 till now and then there is a 1.25 per cent as of September 1, 2022, and then a two per cent increase April 1 of 2023,” said Heather Smith, president of United Nurses of Alberta.
The UNA has been in negotiation with AHS since January of 2020 when they formally entered a bargaining process for a new provincial contract, as their contracts ran from 2016 to 2020.
“AHS came to the table we believe directed by government, requesting a four year contract with zeros, but also proposing in excess of 200 rollbacks, many monetary rollbacks in addition to the zeros,”
Smith explained that the zeros symbolized the fact that there were no wage increases in 2017 to 2020.
Smith said that in March 2020 both parties agreed to pause bargaining and did so for most of 2020 and in October 2020 UNA said they wanted to get back to the bargaining table. The employers agreed but then cancelled everything.
“When we did get back to the bargaining table AHS as directed by government in addition to all the things that they had said in January 2020, all the rollbacks and said that we no longer want zero in each year, in fact instead of having no increase we want you to take a three per cent reduction in your salary,” said Smith.
She said that a year into the pandemic AHS actually made the bargaining proposal worse and they believe the government directed them to do so.
“In September of 2021 we said we would agree to all of the essential service staffing proposals from the employers because we wanted to move on to official formal mediation so that we would have the ability to move on in bargaining,” said Smith.
She said that in September when they notified AHS of their intent and that they now had the ability to go to formal mediation, they agreed to remove almost all of the roll backs off the table.
“We were in mediation from September 2021 until December 21st of 2021, so four days before Christmas, this Christmas just past, mediators (formulated the) recommendation (from) AHS and ourselves which our negotiating committee is recommending to our members that we accept it,” said Smith.
She said that after almost two years of insults and a workforce that has been under an incredibly unprecedented challenge, stressed and exhausted in a way she has never seen in their workforce in her time, they did get a settlement that hopefully will bring some peace and relief.
“Certainly there are members and people have been seeing this in other provinces where nurses have been in negotiations, Manitoba is one example, New Brunswick another, there is also for all of the hours worked in 2021 – so from January 1st to January to December 31 of 2021 there is an additional one per cent lump sum payment, recognition pay I think is what it is being characterized as,” said Smith.

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