Nurses turned up the heat over the summer

Keith Wiley, United Nurses of Alberta

Health workers on both Canada’s East and West coast went directly up against their provincial governments’ power to make repressive laws during tough rounds of collective bargaining over the summer.

For both Nova Scotia and British Columbia nurses bargaining was only finally resolved in August and the outcomes were very different. Nurses in both provinces worked to rule, stopped working overtime and even went on wildcat strikes to back their demands. The critical shortage of Registered Nurses put nurses in a strong bargaining position. Looking at the success of Alberta nurses, a 22.5% salary increase over two years, nurses on both coasts expected their governments to come up with significant improvements to keep nurses in their provinces.

But first Nova Scotia and then BC brought forward dictatorial laws to impose settlements and prevent nurses from striking. In Nova Scotia nurses and the province’s union movement mounted huge protests at the Legislature. The nurses promised to strike anyway and threatened to resign en masse.

"I can’t speak about what our nurses are going to do, but they’re going to be really, really angry," Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union President Heather Henderson, told the press.

The heat was too much for the Conservative government and it agreed to the nurses’ proposal for final offer selection arbitration. In August an arbitrator picked the nurses’ contract proposal over the government’s proposal and awarded them a 17% salary increase over three years. The arbitrator chose the province’s final offer for two other groups — licensed practical nurses and a wide group of technologists and other health care workers. They fared far less well as she awarded them a 7.5% wage increase over three years, far below the union’s request for 13.5%.

Over in B.C. the newly-elected Liberal government made some unfortunate history with that province’s first government imposed agreements for both Registered Nurses and the Health Sciences Association.

The BC government imposed a 60 day cooling off period which shut down the nurses’ ban on most overtime.

The Health Science Employees went on an illegal two-day strike anyway. Both the Nurses and Health Science Employees attempted to continue bargaining, but the Employers and BC government would not move from their final offer, and finally imposed it with Legislation early in August.

Nurses at work sites throughout the province put up picket lines in a spontaneous demonstration of anger and frustration at the government’s move.

For BC nurses the legislated salary increase will leave them behind Alberta nurses, and significant contract rollbacks were also imposed. Again, the related health professions fared much more poorly. "This imposed contract is devastating for our members and for our union," Health Sciences President Cindy Stewart said.

Alberta nurses showed solidarity with Nova Scotia and BC health employees when United Nurses of Alberta placed ads in Halifax and Vancouver newspapers. "Nurses. Alberta desperately needs you!" read the headline on the ads. "It’s time for these governments to wake up and smell the coffee," UNA President Heather Smith said. "If they are not ready to negotiate fairly with their nurses, we would be pleased to have them in Alberta. We placed ads to remind the governments that Alberta, and the whole country is desperately short of registered nurses."