Nurses reject mediator’s recommendation

Last month, I wrote an article summarizing a recent mediator recommendation for nurses in Alberta.

As mentioned in the article, the nurses have been without a current contract since their previous one expired back in March.

The employers—which consist of Alberta Health Services, the new Recovery Alberta, Covenant Health, Lamont Health Care Centre, and The Bethany Group (Camrose)—refused to concede to the proposals presented by nurses during negotiations, so the two parties went to informal mediation.

Nurses were set to receive a 12% wage increase had they accepted the tentative agreement, which was 4.5 points higher than the employers originally offered. The nurses, however, had originally asked for 35%—to make up for a cut to real wages of 18.89% as well as inflation over the next four years.

At a reporting meeting last month, over 500 voting delegates ultimately decided to send the tentative agreement to the broader membership after much intense discussion, rather than voting on it themselves.

The ratification vote was held on 30 October 2024, and a majority of the nurses who participated rejected the mediator’s recommendations.

For a collective agreement to be ratified by nurses represented by United Nurses of Alberta, a majority of the members and a majority of the locals must ratify it.

Turnout for the vote was 100% of the locals and 75.23% of the more than 30,000 UNA members, with 60.48% of the locals and 61.12% of the members voting to reject the mediator’s recommendation.

	Locals	Members
Turnout	100.00%	75.23%
Yes	60.48%	61.12%
No	39.52%	38.88%

The nurses’ bargaining team took these results back to the employer in an effort to encourage them to increase the offer.

Last week, their bargaining team met with the employer group to let them know they plan to apply for formal mediation and to encourage them to ask for more money from the provincial government to better meet the needs of Alberta’s nurses.

At a province-wide meeting last week, the presidents of all the UNA locals authorized the bargaining committee to file for formal mediation and to sign an essential services agreement, which outlines the services UNA members would continue to provide in the case of a lockout or strike.

The ESA must be signed before they can apply for formal mediation, and formal mediation must be attempted before the UNA can proceed with a strike vote.

As I pointed out in last month’s article, several nurses are ready to strike.

Should the mediator proceed with mediation and make a recommendation and the members reject that one, too, there would be a 14-day cooling off period before a strike vote can be held.