UNA members encouraged to ratify new collective agreement

Delegates from United Nurses of Alberta locals have overwhelmingly endorsed the UNA Negotiating Committee’s call for all members to ratify the Mediator’s recommendations for a new Provincial Collective Agreement with Alberta Health Services, Covenant Health and other health care employers.

A ratification vote will take place online on January 25 and 26, 2022.

The Mediator’s recommendations for the new contract, which has a term of April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2024, includes:

• 4.25-per-cent pay increases over the life of the four-year collective agreement, which keeps Alberta nurses the highest paid in Canada.
• current semi-annual lump-sum payments will be converted to the wage grid.
• a one-time lump sum payment of 1 per cent for 2021 in recognition of nurses’ contribution during the pandemic.
• enhanced psychological and mental health supports.
• creation of a union-employer provincial workload advisory committee.
• implementation of a Rural Capacity Investment Fund, which will allocate $5 million a year to recruitment and retention strategies in rural and remote areas of the province, and $2.5 million a year for relocation assistance.

“Our members and their colleagues have been holding Alberta’s health care system together, and it is relief to have reached an agreement with the assistance of the government-appointed Mediator,” said UNA President Heather Smith.

UNA Labour Relations Director David Harrigan, who led the negotiating committee in collective bargaining and Mediation, said this round of negotiations has been the most difficult in his more than three decades with the union.

“We are glad Alberta Health Services was prepared to move away from its initial demands for wage cuts and to drop its efforts to impose more than 200 rollbacks,” Harrigan said. “The bargaining committee feels strongly this agreement will benefit all UNA members and also be fair to the people of Alberta.

In addition to RNs and RPNs employed by AHS and Covenant Health, the agreement covers those employed by Lamont Health Care, and The Bethany Group (Camrose). UNA represents more than 30,000 RNs and RPNs in Alberta, the majority covered by the Provincial Collective Agreement, plus some allied health care workers.