Chinook Regional Hospital in Lethbridge. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Alberta nurses union rejects proposal to delay contract talks to March 2021

Nov 24, 2020 | 12:37 PM

EDMONTON, AB – The added pressure on Alberta’s healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic lead to a proposed delay in negotiating a new collective agreement for nurses, although that proposal was rejected.

Alberta Health Services (AHS) and United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) have been in talks for several months and have met in person on numerous occasions to discuss a potential deal.

UNA had called on employers to quickly negotiate a contract “in order to achieve labour peace, stability the Alberta workforce, and focus on responding to the pandemic.”

Finance Minister Travis Toews said in a letter to both sides, “with the continued growth in confirmed infections, hospitalization rates, and patients in Intensive Care Units, and the sustained burden it is placing on our health systems, we are increasingly pressed to focus our collective efforts on managing and tending to the immediate and evolving needs of Albertans.”

As a result, Toews has asked UNA and AHS to “jointly extend timelines for the commencement of collective bargaining until March 31, 2021. Extending the timelines would also coincide with extending job security for nurses until March 31, 2021.”

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UNA Director of Labour Relations David Harrigan responded by saying that they would only agree to the delay if the province would commit to not eliminating any positions during the pandemic nor when the two sides eventually met again.

“To our surprise and extreme disappointment, Alberta Health Services indicated that it would not agree to cease elimination of positions through attrition during the COVID crisis, nor would it agree that it would not take advantage of the delay and request even more rollbacks. We believe that your desire to eliminate staff at a time when they are most needed is ill-conceived at best.”

As a result, UNA says it cannot agree to pause negotiations. The next scheduled bargaining dates are December 14 and 15.

In an updated statement from Toews’ ministry, he says the union asked for a seven per cent increase in pay, despite Alberta’s nurses being compensated “approximately 8.1 per ent more than their Western Canadian peers.”