Healthcare workers struggle with AHS offer

Last week, the Health Sciences Association of Alberta published an update regarding contract negotiations with Alberta Health Services.

The HSAA represents nearly 30,000 paramedical technical, professional, and general support healthcare workers in both the public and private sectors.

As of July 2022, when HSAA settled their most recent collective agreement with AHS, they represented just shy of 22,000 workers employed by AHS.

That contract expired nearly a year ago, in March 2024, which means that these workers have been working for the last year on an expired contract.

After negotiations broke down this past autumn, the two parties met with a mediator in informal mediation. Their first meeting was in December, followed by 6 more meetings in January.

Unfortunately, informal mediation didn’t result in a new collective agreement.

Part of the problem is that AHS is unwilling to move significantly on their proposals. For example, they’re offering a combined 10% wage increase over 4 years.

Year 1	3.00%
Year 2	3.00%
Year 3	2.00%
Year 4	2.00%

The HSAA bargaining team called this wage offer “insulting” and “disrespectful”.

Now, to be fair, it’s more than the 7.5% they’d been asking for back in October, but it’s still half of what HSAA is asking for:

Year 1	7.50%
Year 2	4.50%
Year 3	4.00%
Year 4	4.00%

At first glance, a 20% raise might seem a lot, but take a look at the increases these workers received in their last two contracts, according to collective agreement wage tables published by Mediation Services:

2017	0.00%
2018	0.00%
2019	0.00%
2020	0.00%
2021	1.00%
2022	1.25%
2023	2.00%

That’s a combined increase of just 4.25% over an 7-year period, or 4.31% of you account for compounding increases. That works out to 0.61% (0.62%) per year on average.

By comparison, the consumer price index in Alberta had grown from 135.1 in April 2016—the last time they got a raise, prior to the most recent contract—to 163.7 in April 2023. That’s an increase of 28.6 points, or 21.17%.

So, while these workers saw their wages increase by just 4.31% over 7 years, inflation more than quadrupled during the same period.

This means these workers ended up with a cut to their real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—of 16.86%.

In other words, for every $1000 these workers made in April 2016, it was worth only $831.40 in April of last year.

Let’s put it another way. For every $1000 they spent on goods and services in April 2016, they’d have to have spent $1168.60 in April 2023 to buy the same goods. Either that, or they could’ve only have afforded $831.40 worth of those goods.

And that’s including their pay raises.

Even with the 10% wage increase AHS is proposing, these workers would still be left with a cut to real wages of nearly 7%. And remember, that 10% is over 4 years, so we’d have to factor in another 4 years of inflation.

There’s no way that AHS’s proposal will be enough.

Heck, the 20% HSAA is proposing won’t even be enough to make up for 4 years of wage freezes and 3 years of below-inflation increases. Their proposal would see a net increase to real wages of 3.14%.

But, as I mentioned earlier, that 20% is over 4 years, which means that we’d have to factor in an additional 4 years of inflation.

Inflation between April 2023—their last wage increase—and April 2024 alone was 2.99%, which eats up almost all that net increase. Inflation for the remainder of 2024 was 0.65%, and when we tack that onto the 2.99%, we get 3.64%.

See? It’s already gone. And we still have inflation this year, next year, and the first 4 months of 2027.

But that’s not the only bad news.

AHS wants to prevent the workers in the following positions from getting any of these wage increases:

• Health information management professionals
• Social workers
• Speech language pathologists
• Respiratory therapists
• Pharmacy technicians

Instead, they want to give them lump sum payments. That’s certainly better than nothing but 4 years of wage freezes; however, lump sum payments are bad for workers in the long run because they don’t increase the base salary.

Let me explain.

If a worker makes $40,000 a year and gets a lump sum payment of $1000, their income would be $41,000 that year. However, when wage increases are calculated the following year, they would be based on $40,000, not on the $41,000.

In this case, this would effectively freeze wages for these workers, and despite any lump sum payments they do receive, any wage increases they get in 2027—when the next contract is negotiated—will be based on their 2023 wages.

We’re not done yet.

AHS also wants to take away the ability for EMS workers to determine when and where they work.

As well, they want to change raises so that they’re based on hours worked, not calendar anniversaries. That means if you don’t work the minimum number of hours, you don’t qualify for the raise.

Because apparently inflation only affects people who work full-time.

They want to adjust when shift differentials premiums apply, resulting in lost wages for workers who have to work evening or weekend shifts.

Plus, AHS proposed the ability for them to cancel on-call shifts without notice and the elimination of banking on-call shifts.

AHS has put forward a pretty crappy proposal, one that disrespects how critical these healthcare workers are to our public healthcare system.

The bargaining team for these workers—which includes social workers, paramedics, an addictions counsellor, a respiratory therapist, and a dental hygienist—will be entering formal mediation soon.

This is a necessary step before the workers can go on strike or before the employer can lock them out of the workplace. In the meantime, they’re filling essential service agreements, which determines which healthcare services will continue should a strike or lockout occur.

These workers have been disrespected for far too long. It’s not surprising that they’re willing to strike if it comes down to it.