Yesterday, negotiators representing the Prairie Mountain Health (PMH) and Interlake-Eastern (IERHA) regional health authorities presented the MGEU Bargaining Committee representing workers in the Community and Facility Support Bargaining Units with its “best offer”.
The offer, which falls short of what the bargaining committee believes is fair and reasonable, will now go to members in these units with a strong recommendation from the committee to reject the latest offer.
“Throughout bargaining, we have been committed to achieving the best deal possible - one that ensures fairness for community and facility support workers, and that provides a real fix to the health care staffing crisis,” said MGEU President Kyle Ross. “Unfortunately what is being offered does not go nearly far enough to solve the recruitment and retention issues we are seeing. It would leave health care facilities with critical staff shortages and a wasteful dependence on private agency staff.”
In a recent MGEU report, Fixing The Staffing Crisis in Manitoba’s Health Care System, MGEU pointed out some of the glaring issues in rural health care including:
• Health Care Aide vacancy rates are over 30 percent in PMH, including 16 facilities with vacancy rates over 40 percent.
• There are over 700 vacant health care aide and home care positions in PMH and IERHA.
• Spending on private for-profit agency staffing has spiked from $8.3M in 2021/22 to nearly $30M in 2023/24, with half of those expenditures going to travel costs.
• Staffing levels in facility support classifications have stagnated, while patient needs grow.
• Wages across the health care team must improve in order to attract and retain workers in small to medium-sized communities, where employers are struggling to compete with the retail and service industries for workers.
The 6600 MGEU members in this bargaining unit will now vote either to accept the offer as their new collective agreement, or to reject it and give the bargaining committee a strike mandate.
A strike mandate does not always mean a strike will follow, but it does give the bargaining committee the ability to call for a strike if contract terms are not meaningfully improved.
“The bargaining committee feels we need to tell the employer that community and facility support workers should get the same respect and consideration that has been shown to other health care professionals,” Ross said. “Until then, we will continue to lose workers to low wage jobs in other industries. Our members want to contribute to meaningfully improving health care – all Manitobans want that, but we need to ensure these jobs are competitive and coveted in our communities, not a stop gap on the road to something better.”
In the coming weeks, MGEU will be holding online information sessions for members to learn the details of the employer offer. Members will also be able to have their questions about the offer addressed.