Union for Halifax nurses says conciliation talks break down over ratio issue
Posted Mar 18, 2014 06:50:47 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
There’s more labour trouble for the healthcare sector in Nova Scotia.
Talks between Capital Health registered nurses and their employer broke down Monday and they’re poised to walk off the job.
The big issue is improving nurse to patient ratios, to improve patient safety say the union, from one-to-one and one-to-four in certain areas.
The union says it would require 125 new nurses and Nova Scotia General Employees Union president Joan Jessome says the union is fine with mandated ratios being phased in as opposed to all at once, but she says Capital Health isn’t budging.
“To take away the process that actually ensures patient safety kind of flies in the face of what this whole issue is about,” she says. “They weren’t prepared to discuss our proposal, they said it’s a non-starter and as long as ratios are on the table there’s no negotiating.”
The health district predicts it would need five or six times the union’s projection which would cost millions of dollars.
Jessome explains there’s no discussion and the union can’t barging with itself.
“The conciliator said that he will file his report by Wednesday, so it will start a strike countdown on Thursday and the earliest time, if it comes to the point when we have to do this, it will around April 3,” she says.
Jessome thinks she knows why the talks broke down. She says Capital Health has been acting like the McNeil government is going to bring in essential services legislation like it did with homecare workers and is bargaining like it feels no pressure to reach a deal.
She says the government is engaging in “blackmail bargaining” and will do to the nurses what it did to homecare workers last month.
“They feel that this government will introduce legislation and it will take care of their issues,” she explains.
A strike vote held in February saw nurses vote 90 per cent in favour of walking off the job to back their contract demands.
Local 97 of the union represents 2,600 registered nurses who work at health facilities in the Halifax area.
