Manitoba Associa-tion of Health Care Professionals (MAHCP) members across the province have voted to ratify the provincial government’s collective agreement offer.
Last month, MAHCP members picketed to communicate their plan to go on strike if the province did not present a contract offer to the union’s bargaining team by Sunday, Jan. 31.
At that point, MAHCP members, including 61 in Flin Flon, had been waiting almost two years for a collective agreement.
President Bob Moroz said the new collective agreement does not contain major changes, but there are significant clarifications and language changes.
He also said the agreement is retroactive, meaning that increases in general wages dating back to 2014 will be applied for all members who ratified.
In late January, before an agreement was on the table, Moroz said workload issues relating to staffing shortages were key for the bargaining team.
“In some situations we believe it has been addressed,” Moroz said Monday, but he added that retention and recruitment issues were still concerns for many members.
Moroz added that a positive addition to the agreement was a commitment from both the province and MAHCP to create a dialogue outside of the bargaining process to address workload, retention and recruitment issues.
“The purpose of that is so that we’re not trying to whittle down to a list that we can agree to while we’re bargaining, so it is more of a chance to have discussions and share data back and forth and share opinions,” Moroz said.
The MAHCP central table includes 21 certificates, or sub groups. Each one has the authority to reject or accept a proposed agreement regardless of what members in other certificates do.
Flin Flon employees are part of one of two certificates, the Northern Health Region group and the province-wide Diagnostic Services Manitoba group.
While most MAHCP members have chosen to ratify the offer, one certificate, based in the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, has not.
MAHCP represents skilled health-care workers such as lab technicians, physiotherapists, social workers, speech pathologists, EMS personnel and ultrasound technicians.
