Sixty-one health-care workers in Flin Flon could go on strike next week if the Manitoba government does not offer their union a new contract by this Sunday, Jan. 31.
Local members of the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals (MAHCP) held an information picket on Wednesday, Jan. 27.
Walking in shifts during their lunch breaks, they circulated the block that runs from the Northern Lights Personal Care Home on Church Street to the post office on Main Street, handing out leaflets about the union and implications of the possible strike.
MAHCP represents skilled health-care workers such as lab technicians, physiotherapists, social workers, speech pathologists, EMS personnel and ultrasound technicians.
According to MAHCP president Bob Moroz, roughly 3,200 members province-wide are covered by agreements being bargained at the moment.
The last MAHCP contract expired on March 31, 2014. Its members have been working without a contract since that date.
According to the union, MAHCP has made multiple attempts to move the bargaining process forward, but little has happened over nearly two years.
“There seems to be a pattern on the part of government to drag negotiations on longer than we have seen before,” wrote Moroz in an email exchange with The Reminder. “These things always take time, since negotiations do tend to be very complex, but this amount of time is extremely frustrating for our members.”
Wednesday afternoon, that frustration was echoed by the members gathered on Church Street.
“We haven’t been offered anything yet. They [Manitoba’s bargaining team] keep stepping away and going to find something else to do rather than talk to us,” said MAHCP member Susan Murray, who works in Flin Flon as a sonographer, or ultrasound technician.
In October 2015, the union responded to the delay with a strike mandate vote, which passed with an 88 per cent majority.
A strike deadline is set for Sunday, Jan. 31.
“We have no other option,” said local strike captain Kamran Bashir, a senior lab technologist at the Flin Flon General Hospital.
Bashir said he feels badly about the impact that a strike would have on the community—mainly, a serious slowdown in health services.
Doctors and nurses depend on diagnostic information collected by MAHCP workers, such as lab results, X-rays, and CT scans, to care for patients. It’s anticipated those services would be suspended in the case of a strike.
Bashir says workers will still provide essential services support in critical, life-and-death cases.
Other services that are essential to the wellness of residents, such as social work, occupational therapy and mental health services, would be up in the air during a strike as well.
When asked for the ideal resolution to the current situation, the striking workers gathered outside the personal care home agreed that a speedy contract was the goal.
“A fair contract as soon as possible is what we are looking for,” said Bashir.
That may still be in the cards: in an email sent on Thursday morning, Moroz said the union and the province had agreed to hold two more days of bargaining, on Thursday and Friday this week. He said the union’s decision to strike would depend on the progress of those negotiations.
In the meantime, there is a lot of ground to cover, Moroz said.
“We need to address workload issues related to staffing shortages in so many areas. There are also improvements in the language of certain parts of the agreement that both sides are seeking, based on our daily experience in between bargaining cycles. None of these issues are resolved when bargaining takes this long. Finally, members have not seen any increase in wages for the past three years, since the last increase would have been in 2013.”
MAHCP members also held information pickets this week in The Pas and at locations in Winnipeg.
