After seven months at the bargaining table, the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses notified the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations Thursday morning that collective bargaining has reached an impasse.
SUN president Tracy Zambory said she is disappointed negotiations have stalled when progress had been made early in the process.
“We are not seeing any movement,” she said. “We’ve had a few times when we’ve come back together and they’ve delivered us the same answer twice. We know that the impasse is a tool that we can use — it’s our legislative right to do this —to bring the parties back together.”
An impasse is declared when one of the parties is no longer amending their position and no progress is being made.
Under the new Saskatchewan Employment Act, the parties are required to enter into a conciliation period of up to 60 days in an attempt to resolve the outstanding issues. A conciliator or labour relations officer is assigned to assist the parties and determines when the period is up.
Neither party is permitted to strike or lock-out during this period. Nor will SUN be taking a strike vote at this time.
One of the key concerns is SAHO’s attempt to significantly restrict the ability of registered nurses to exercise their professional judgment to ensure safe staffing levels, Zambory said.
When RNs are in their units, agencies or facilities and assess that a situation is becoming critical — for one or more patients in their care — the charge nurse must have the ability to call in more staff to ensure patient safety, she said.
“It could be a registered nurse, it could be a licensed practical nurse or it could be a special care aide,” Zambory said. “That all comes from the assessment that the registered nurse has to do ahead of time.”
Previously charge nurses could call in more staff after consulting with a manager.
“What we could see was happening was that the management — SAHO – wanted to further restrict that ability to be able to assess and co-ordinate and call in that extra staff for patient safety,” Zambory said. “Often times, and I can speak from experience here, the registered nurse is able to, without a question, call in snow removal, call in kitchen staff, call someone in IT in case your electronic charting goes down.”
Sometimes, those individuals were called in at overtime rates, but that was never questioned, she said.
SAHO’s proposal to restrict registered nurses from calling in additional staff would put RNs in a compromising position from a professional standpoint because it impedes their ability to address immediate and urgent patient needs and exercise their responsibility to assess and coordinate care as defined by legislation, Zambory said.
“All of a sudden, there is a squeeze being put on,” she said. “Now they’re even considering a non-nurse manager that has no clinical experience and doesn’t know the patients at all so we’d have to run it through someone who has virtually no idea about patient safety. They don’t know what a registered nurse does.”
That brings into question the respect and value of the legislative role that registered nurses have, Zambory said.
Negotiations had been going along well until late November and early December, she said.
“It’s important to say that we are as committed today, as we were seven months ago, to be able to get a fair and good collective agreement,” Zambory said. “We’re still very committed to working together.”
The union recognizes the province is facing tough financial times, she said.
“We were all ready to have conversation around how we can make the workplace better, how we can make health care in Saskatchewan the best it can be for patients and we understood that we had to talk cost neutral, cost savings,” Zambory said.
SUN is proposing language in the contract that would reinforce the registered nurses’ professional responsibility to flag and deal with patient care issues in real time.
“Every day, registered nurses are charged with the responsibility of having to make life-saving decisions about patients in this province, and their ability to independently determine whether staff levels are sufficient to provide the safest care possible at any given moment is a crucial element of safe patient care,” Zambory said.
When SUN and SAHO began bargaining, the shared focus was to find innovation and cost-saving solutions to improve the delivery of health care, develop quality workplaces, and put patient safety at the forefront.
She said the province’s RNs are left wondering whether those advising SAHO were ever truly committed to the bargaining process.
Saskatchewan’s registered nurses have been without a collective agreement for close to two years. The previous agreement expired on March 30, 2014.
SUN and SAHO have been actively bargaining since last July.
SUN represents 10,000 RNs, registered psychiatric nurses (RPNs), RN nurse practitioners and graduates in the province.
Published: February 11, 2016
Source: Leader Post http://leaderpost.com/news/local-news/negotiations-between-the-saskatchewan-nurses-and-saho-reach-impasse
