Nurses employed by Shared Health are awaiting a final offer after they were the only group in the state to reject the proposed contract last month.
“Once we receive it, we will notify our members,” the Manitoba Nurses' Union said Wednesday.
A Shared Health spokesperson said negotiations are ongoing for about 4,100 nurses who work at the Health Sciences Centre, CancerCare Manitoba, the province's diagnostic services, Selkirk Mental Health Centre, Manitoba Youth Treatment Centre, Children's Rehabilitation Centre and Eden Health Care Services.
Health Sciences Centre (Michaela MacKenzie/Free Press Files)
Shared Health nurses were the only ones in Manitoba's six health regions to hold out, after union members voted in May on new contracts for the Winnipeg Regional Health Unit, Prairie Mountain Health Authority, Interlake Eastern Health Authority, Northern Health Authority and Southern Health, which were approved largely by narrow margins.
Fifty-seven percent of Shared Health nurses voted to reject the proposed contract.
Unmanageable workloads, a lack of protection against unsafe nurse-to-patient ratios, and pay disparities between full-time and part-time nurses were key factors in some nurses' dissatisfaction with the proposed contract.
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Nurses spoke to the Free Press on the condition of anonymity after the May 17 vote. One nurse said she couldn't work full time because she needed to care for her children. Another said she voted against the contract because of the pay disparity.
The proposal included a pay bonus for full-time nurses and for part-time nurses who work the equivalent number of hours, amounting to about $6 an hour.
“When you start seeing wage disparities it's not a happy work environment,” a full-time nurse at HSC said on May 18.
“We all work hard, especially here at HSC, and we work under the negative circumstances that we read about.”
— Free Press Staff
