TORONTO, April 19,
2024 /CNW/ - 65,000 Ontario hospital workers represented by the
Ontario Council of Hospital Unions-CUPE (OCHU-CUPE) and SEIU
Healthcare will see a 6% wage increase (3% wage increases in each
of the next two years), improvements to health and dental benefits,
enhancements to weekend, evening and night premiums, and pay for
periods of quarantine or isolation due to outbreaks of communicable
illnesses. This comes as a result of an intensive round of
coordinated bargaining and almost identical, two-year arbitrated
contracts awarded by Arbitrator William Kaplan to OCHU-CUPE and
SEIU Healthcare on Thursday.
This award follows a June 2023
Kaplan decision that awarded these same workers a 6.25% retroactive
wage increase following the defeat of Doug
Ford's unconstitutional Bill 124.
This past fall, along with Unifor, OCHU-CUPE and SEIU Healthcare
proposed to bargain jointly with the Ontario Hospital Association
but were denied in what the unions called "a decision clearly made
to divide the unions and weaken outcomes for hospital workers."
Notwithstanding, the unions signed a Solidarity Pact and
maintained collaboration and coordination across the bargaining
tables. This is just the beginning from unions bringing workers
together to save our hospitals.
In addition to other compensation and benefit improvements, the
unions also achieved mandatory reporting around agency usage, which
financial reporting makes clear is an expensive band-aid to the
long-running staffing crisis.
The Award also provides for a review of healthcare work which
has been privatized, with a view to assessing the viability of
bringing it back within Ontario's
public hospitals.
QUOTES:
"Hospital workers can temporarily breathe a sigh of relief
knowing their wages are going up six percent over the next two
years with this new contract. Patients deserve hospital workers who
are focused on them, not the economic anxieties they face because
of years of attacks from the provincial government. After our
unions delivered Premier Ford a defeat on Bill 124, this award is a
win for hospital workers who have been holding the healthcare
system together with sacrifice and grits, and it's a brutal
recognition that hospital services will indeed collapse without
better wages for frontline staff. While data shows that
Ontario patients are waiting
longer for the care they need, healthcare workers shouldn't have to
beg for the tools to do their jobs well. Unfortunately, the Ford
government refused to join us at the bargaining table to hear
directly from frontline staff who know the solution to healthcare
access can only come from investments in nurse-to-patient ratios.
On that Premier Ford is AWOL. So, here's a policy solution even
politicians can understand: Raise the wage. Hire the staff. Fix the
care." – Sharleen Stewart,
President, SEIU Healthcare
"Today's arbitration decision will lift the spirits of frontline
hospital workers who are struggling with impossible workloads in a
staff retention crisis. Significant improvements to dental and
other benefits, real wage increases, and substantial adjustments to
premiums will all contribute to making these frontline hospital
staff feel valued and help them to better cope with the
cost-of-living crisis that all working people are facing. New
measures to police agency nursing profits, review contracted-out
work, and provide stable weekend staffing are also good steps
forward. However, we do regret that we were unable to advance
towards nurse-to-patient ratios in this agreement." - Michael Hurley, President, OCHU-CUPE.
SOURCE SEIU Healthcare