MGEU advises members to reject offer

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The union representing 6,649 health-care aide and support staff in two health regions — including Prairie Mountain — is recommending they reject their most recent contract offer.

The last collective bargaining agreement for Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union workers in Prairie Mountain and Interlake-Eastern health authorities ended March 31.

The union members include health-care aides, dietary workers, cleaning staff, home care staff and other support workers. Of the total, 4,668 are employed by Prairie Mountain Health and 1,981 by Interlake-Eastern.

In a statement issued Thursday, the union said the health authorities’ latest offer “falls short of what the bargaining committee believes is fair and reasonable.”

Over the next few weeks, the union said it will hold online information sessions to go over the details with members before they hold a ratification vote.

Members will have the option to either accept the offer as a new contract or reject it and grant the union a strike mandate “if contract terms are not meaningfully approved.”

In a Thursday phone interview, MGEU president Kyle Ross said what his members were offered fell short of other recent offers made to health-care workers in the province.

Earlier this year, the Manitoba Nurses Union ratified a four-year contract for its members.

“From what we’ve seen in our analysis of the deals that came out, those deals are far richer and are far from what they’re offering our workers,” Ross said. “Our workers are being treated as second class and they do a lot of the grunt hard work that’s in a hospital and in these facilities, these care homes and people’s homes.”

While the health regions might claim the most recent proposal is the best they can offer, Ross said it doesn’t address ongoing recruitment and retention issues, especially in the face of so many vacancies in the public system and increasing use of staff from private, for-profit agencies.

Last week, the MGEU issued a report titled “From Crisis to Stability: Fixing the Staffing Crisis in Manitoba’s Health Care System,” which said it had obtained information through a freedom of information request showing a vacancy rate above 30 per cent for health-care aide positions in PMH and 33 per cent for home-care workers.

“That’s the area we need to focus heavily on because the use of agency (workers) is rampant and it’s far more costly than it is actually bringing people into the public system to serve people in those communities,” Ross said.

He said at the wages currently being offered, the health-care system is competing with fast food and bank teller positions, which aren’t as difficult or stressful.

As for whether he was hoping a revised offer would come in, Ross said that was a question for the employers.

Prairie Mountain Health did not respond to a request for comment on the situation on Thursday.

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