Nurses’ deal sets precedent for future deals

Capital Health nurses will soon be the highest paid in Atlantic Canada under the terms of a newly-awarded contract.

An arbitrator awarded the 2500 nurses working at Nova Scotia’s largest health authority a deal that adds up to a pay raise of 7.1 per cent over a three-year period.

Joan Jessome, president of the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union said other groups will now expect similar results.

“Every time I achieve something for the RNs I get inundated by members thinking that we only care about the RNs and not them,” Jessome told Maritime Morning, Wednesday. “This settlement, nobody else has this. We’re all heading into another round of bargaining. I can tell you the membership that I represent will be expecting us to try and deliver that for them.”

She said other health care workers in particular will be vying for a similar deal.

“Our union has the right to strike and it may take that, unfortunately,” she said. “I hope it doesn’t but there isn’t a lot of choices here. They have seen the RN settlement and I can tell you that the people working in the health care system have continuously gotten less than the RNs have.”

Jessome said it’s her job to get the best deal for her members and not worry about how the government will pay for wage increases.

The deal means the provincial government will be looking for millions of dollars in the already strained health care budget, but Premier Darrell Dexter says it’s a fair award for the nurses.

“They’re being recognized for the work that they do in the system,” Dexter told the Canadian Press. “We’re pleased with that. We’re pleased that arbitration worked. In all of these, there are still going to be financial challenges for the province.”

He said the government realized there were risks with sending the Capital District Health Authority and the union to arbitration.

“The question is, ‘What are the alternatives to that?’ and in this case, the alternatives would have either been moving forward with some kind of legislation to put in place a legislative contract, or allowing the nurses to go forward with a strike,” he said.

Under the deal, nurses will be receiving one per cent raises for each of the last two years.

They will get a 3.5 per cent raise as of Tuesday and an additional 1.6 per cent raise in May 2012.

The NSGEU said the increases mean a nurse with six years of experience will get an additional $5,000 a year by next May to bring their annual salary to more than $70,000.

Jessome says the decision will provide the basis for future negotiations for other government bargaining units.

“There’s no question it changes the water on the beans,” Jessome told the Canadian Press, pointing to the graduated increases. “I don’t think that was on the employer’s agenda.”

She said she knows there will be opposition to the deal as the government tries to close the health care gap.

“We’ll always have the opposition to it, there’s no question,” she told Global News. “But this is an award. It was fairly negotiated. We did the presentation. The government actually offered us the opportunity to take this to arbitration. And the award is the award, everybody has to live by it.”

The Chronicle Herald reports Capital Health workers have historically earned the highest wages in the region, but nurses in Newfoundland and Labrador moved to the top of the pay scale after winning their most recent contract.