Tories call for essential service legislation debate
Posted Apr 27, 2012 06:13:48 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
As Capital Health workers vote on a tentative collective agreement, the leader of the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservatives says MLAs should be debating essential service legislation to prevent future health care disruptions.
Capital Health reached the deal with the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union Local 42 Wednesday evening. Workers have since been visiting voting stations to ratify the contract.
Capital Health cancelled some surgeries and started closing some parts of its facilities this week in anticipation of a strike. Operations are now returning to normal levels – but PC party leader Jamie Baillie says Nova Scotians shouldn’t have to endure such uncertainty where health care is concerned.
Baillie is calling for a debate to enact legislation that would make hospital care an essential service, preventing workers from striking in the future.
“I was not in favour of debating it during negotiations,” Baillie said. “But now that the negotiation is over I think Nova Scotians expect their leaders to put in place a mechanism to ensure they’re not put through the wringer again, like too many of them were over the last two weeks.”
Premier Darrell Dexter says he will consider options to manage future healthcare labour disputes – but says he doesn’t believe it’s effective in preventing strikes.
“My focus at this time, though, is not on anything like that,” he said. “It’s on resolving the current situation, getting an agreement and making sure public services are fully restored.”
Dexter says the government will assess its position on essential services legislation once the members of Local 42 have voted on their tentative deal.
Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil says the government should have intervened in the dispute much sooner in order to avoid a disruption.
“They had set aside the kind of money in this budget to deal with whatever was coming down,” he said. “They should have been negotiating and should have dealt with this long before we got to the point where we were cancelling surgeries.”
More than 500 surgeries were postponed and 172 hospital beds were closed. Capital Health officials announced that emergency care would be maintained, but elective and non-emergency surgeries would be stopped until full staffing could be restored.
After one deadline extension, the union and employer reached an agreement Wednesday evening.
Pay was the main sticking point for workers. Both bargaining parties agreed to have an arbitrator decide between the employer’s 6.5 per cent pay raise offer over three years, and the union’s request for a 9.05 per cent increase.
Service will officially begin ramping back up once the union ratifies the contract with a majority vote.
