Alberta Health Services, nurses' union seek mediation over collective agreement

Following unsuccessful negotiations over a new collective agreement, Alberta Health Services and the United Nurses of Alberta are applying for formal mediation, Finance Minister Travis Toews said in a news release Thursday.

Both parties have also agreed on which health-care services are essential in the event of a strike or lockout. 

In an interview with CBC News on Thursday, UNA labour relations director David Harrigan said the union agreed to employers' staffing proposals in order to proceed to mediation.

The union had submitted essential staffing plans of its own but withdrew them.

Pay dispute

UNA, which represents more than 30,000 nurses and other health-care workers, is asking for a two per cent wage increase per year in a two-year agreement. The union says nurses have not received a raise in five years, despite inflation rising by about two per cent a year. 

During collective bargaining with AHS and other health-care employers last month, the union said, employers offered a government-directed proposal that included a three per cent salary rollback.

Premier Jason Kenney has said nurses in Alberta earn more than their peers in other provinces and that his government would not punish people in the private sector by raising taxes.

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Meanwhile, amid a surging fourth wave of COVID-19, the province is experiencing health-care staffing shortages.

AHS told the union last week it was invoking emergency work rules for nurses in order to address the problem.

Harrigan said that at a meeting yesterday, union leaders made it clear members feel fed up and frustrated.

"Any sensible organization, when they have a staffing shortage, doesn't say to the staff, 'I want to cut your pay and I want to make your terms and conditions of employment worse,' because that's just going to drive people away," he said.

In Thursday's news release, Toews said he was confident that mediation would be productive.

Right to strike

Fourteen days will be allotted for mediation, and if an agreement is not reached, following a 14-day cooling-off period, nurses could vote to strike.

"What we're hoping, of course, is that there won't be a need for job action," Harrigan said.

Prior to a 2015 Supreme Court decision, which ruled all workers have the constitutional right to strike, public-sector workers could not legally strike in Alberta.

Nurses now have that right — and UNA president Heather Smith has said support for a strike is growing.

If nurses do vote to strike, Harrigan said only-one third of UNA's workers could stop working, because of the essential services agreements with employers.