Health-care workers will hold their first provincewide vote as a result of stalled bargaining talks.
A spokesman for the Nova Scotia Healthcare Council of Unions said the bargaining teams for the Nova Scotia Health Authority and the IWK Health Centre aren’t taking the council seriously.
“They’re moving at a pace that we’ve never seen before in bargaining,” said Jason MacLean, president of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union (NSGEU), in an interview Thursday afternoon.
“They keep tabling concessions when (Premier) Stephen McNeil had announced nobody would lose anything because of the merger of the health authorities.”
The concessions sought by the NSHA and IWK include a mobility clause that would allow them to move an employee anywhere in the province at any time, MacLean said.
“That’s a non-starter,” he said. “I mean, that will break up families. . . . Based on that and other things, we’re asking our members to vote in favour of going on strike.”
The council of unions was created as a result of the amalgamation of health authorities into a single authority in 2015. The health-care workers have been without a contract since that time.
The council comprises 6,500 members from theNSGEU, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Unifor and the Nova Scotia
Nurses Union. (The nurses union issued a news release Thursday clarifying that “only a few” of their members are part of the council).
The NSGEU is the chief negotiator and CUPE is the deputy negotiator for the council.
Council members include people who work in hospitals and in the field, MacLean said, such as child psychologists, social workers and lab technicians.
Details of the strike vote will be released in the coming days but MacLean said the four unions will vote throughout April, with the results made publicly available by the end of the month.
The talks, which have been ongoing for a year, have been in conciliation for the past week.
While the council of unions isn’t walking away from the table and will attend conciliation sessions in April, “we need to send a message to the employer that we need them to take us seriously,” MacLean said. “What we’re trying to do is let our members have a voice beyond the bargaining team so the bargaining team is asking the members to vote in favour of going out on strike.”
The Nova Scotia Health Authority didn’t provide anyone for an interview Thursday. In an emailed response to questions, the authority denied slowing down negotiations.
“If you look at the timelines, including our efforts to get negotiations started and to keep the process moving, it’s clear that we are committed to the process,” spokeswoman Kristen Lipscombe said.
The authority also denied taking away employees’benefits by insisting on the mobility clause
or trying to break up families.
“This is about negotiating collective agreements that are fair to our employees, the employers, and to Nova Scotians — the taxpayers,” Lipscombe said.
“Our agreements must help us remain sustainable in terms of the costs. Equally important are consistent terms and conditions of employment that will allow us to function effectively as two employers. In the case of NSHA, this means being able to function as one provincial employer not hampered by the former geographic boundaries of the DHAs, and the significant variations in employee terms and conditions.”
Asked how it was preparing for a possible strike, the authority said, “There is also no strike planned, or a date set for a strike. However we have a responsibility to plan and that has been underway for some time. Essential services helps to ensure the ongoing safe care of patients if there is a labour disruption, like a strike.”
The NDP said the strike vote plan is another indication the Liberals are mismanaging labour issues.
“Under Stephen McNeil we had the first ever provincewide teachers’ strike and now the first ever provincewide strike vote in health care,” said Tammy Martin, the NDP’s labour and health spokeswoman, in a news release Thursday. “This government needs to start working with the people on the ground who are providing care to Nova Scotians.”
The IWK didn’t respond to a reque
