Representatives from the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN), the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA), and the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations (SAHO) came together to meet on July 21st, 22nd, 23rd and 24th.
SUN’s Negotiations Committee continued its drive towards getting through the remaining non-monetary items and revisiting the articles which were deferred, specifically Articles 26, 37 and 45.
Discussions opened on July 21st with Article 8.02 (Overtime) and LOUs #5 (LOUs outside of the Collective Agreement) and #9 (Retention of late career nurses). Agreement was reached rather quickly by the parties to new language in all three of the topics outlined above. The changes to Article 8.02 simply bring more clarity to the instances where overtime would apply. LOU #5 now includes a joint committee approach to reviewing all LOUs that exist outside of the Collective Agreement to determine those that should be included within the body of the Collective Agreement or put to rest as they no longer apply or are relevant. LOU #9 has been updated to ensure the parties discuss initiatives within certain timelines to utilize late career nurses and their experience towards mentorship, preceptorship and other initiatives to provide support to new nurses in our system.
The balance of our time with SAHO was dedicated to the discussion surrounding the mobility of our members under Articles 26 and 45 and to casual work under Article 37. The parties managed to exchange multiple proposals on these three articles over a three-day period (July 22, 23, 24). There has been movement within the three articles from both sides but the main issues that still remain to be solved are the size of an area to be covered by any positions serving the community under Article 26.02 and mutual agreement if the size of an area needs to be expanded to a larger area than the Collective Agreement allows. The current language in our Collective Agreement requires mutual agreement between the Union and the Employer if a position will be responsible for more than three (3) units or three (3) work areas. SAHO does not wish to have that type of restriction in the new Collective Agreement. SUN feels that the current mutual agreement language protects our members from having to cover extremely large areas of the province without discussion and agreement from the Union. Our position has been to ensure our members serving the community have reasonably sized geographic areas so they will be able to provide safe patient care in a timely fashion and not be stuck in a car for extended periods of time travelling. SUN believes that the potentially expansive sizes that SAHO is looking for will limit our community nurses ability to provide care to a larger number of clients within a shift as they would be spending the bulk of their time in travel mode.
As we have stated previously, SUN’s goal has been and always will be to problem-solve, consider the interests and challenges of all parties, and bring language that supports the broader goal of stabilizing, enhancing, and supporting the nursing workforce in Saskatchewan.
SUN’s Committee is hopeful that all parties will continue their commitment to productive discussions and significant progress when meetings resume during the week of August 11th where the parties will continue discussing Articles 26, 37, 45 and other items that have been deferred to date, prior to beginning to address language of a monetary nature.
