Alberta nurses agree to 4.25% wage increase

Earlier this week the United Nurses of Alberta ratified their new collective bargaining agreement.

In an online vote held on Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week, 87% of those who voted chose to ratify the agreement, which itself was a result of recommendations that an independent mediator, Lyle Kanee, made last month.

According to the UNA, the new agreement is retroactive to 1 April 2020 and will run until 31 March 2024. Which means, negotiations will probably start again next year.

The new CBA includes the following changes:

• 4.25% pay increases over the life of the agreement
• Conversion of current semi-annual lump-sum payments to the wage grid
• A one-time lump sum payment of 1% per hour worked for 2021 in recognition of nurses’ contributions 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.

I want to focus on just the pay increases.

A pay increase of 4.25% seems like a big deal, even if it averages out to just over 1% a year. Especially when you consider that going into bargaining, Alberta Health Services had originally proposed a 3% wage rollback in the first year and wage freezes in the final 3 years.

On the other hand, UNA had originally proposed an increase of 2% annually.

So, in short, it’s not as much as they wanted, but I guess it could’ve been worse.

The final 4.25% will be broken down as 0% in the first year (2020), 1% in the second year (2021), 1.25% this year, and 2% next year.

And actually—as far as salary increases go—this is a better deal than the UNA got in 2017, under the NDP government.

Here, take a look at the salary increases for the last 3 CBAs

2013-2014	0.00%
2014-2015	2.00%
2015-2016	2.25%
2016-2017	3.00%
2017-2018	0.00%
2018-2019	0.00%
2019-2020*	0.00%
2020-2021	0.00%
2021-2022	1.00%
2022-2023	1.25%
2023-2024	2.00%

Nurses saw no wage increases for the CBA negotiated during the NDP administration.

Over the last 10 years, Alberta nurses saw an average wage increase of 1.15%, and a total increase of 11.5%. Inflation averaged 1.49% during the same period, with a combined inflation of 15.99%.

For the last 10 decades, nurses wage increases haven’t even been keeping up with inflation.

Which raises the question: will Alberta nurses ever see a government that takes them seriously?