A 30th N.S. long-term care home, about 3,000 total workers, join ongoing strike

A 30th Nova Scotia long term care home is joining an ongoing strike that began 11 days ago, and no new talks between the province and union have been planned.

CUPE said Friday more than 100 workers from Lunenburg Home for Special Care have given their 48-hour notice to join about 2,900 other workers on picket lines.

Essential services are being maintained, but many physiotherapists, occupational therapists and recreational therapists are not reporting to work. Other striking workers include nurses, continuing-care assistants and housekeeping staff.

“These workers aren’t backing down until they’re offered a deal that brings them all as close as possible to a living wage,” Taylor Johnston, a spokesperson with CUPE, said in an email Friday.

Johnston said the government’s current offer is “several dollars off the mark” of what’s considered a living wage in Nova Scotia.

Collective agreements for these workers expired in 2023.

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Barbara Adams, Nova Scotia’s long-term care minister, said Thursday the government is offering pay increases of at least 12 per cent over four years, while some workers would see pay bumps of 24 per cent. There’s also a 70 per cent increase in shift and weekend premiums.

It also includes money to set up a defined benefit pension plan for workers at facilities that currently don’t have this benefit.

Adams urged CUPE to share the specifics of their offer to its membership, saying as recently as a couple days ago, she’d heard from members who were asking to know what’s in the offer.

“What we’re really asking CUPE to do is to take it to their members and allow them to vote on it,” the minister told reporters Thursday.

Johnston said Adams’ claim that members are unaware of the offer is “patently false” and the union held three town hall meetings to go through the proposal, and made details available to its members.

“Members are aware of the deal, they have seen it. We have heard many reports from members in minister Adams’ constituency that she is ignoring their emails and calls and even blocking them on social media — yet she claims she has heard from our members saying they haven’t seen the deal,” Johnston said.

Johnston said members want the strike to end and to return to work, but in order to do so government needs to be willing to bargain on a deal that “actually works.”

“The government instead insists on forcing them to take the same deal they’ve already rejected over and over. More homes joined the strike this week and even more are coming,” she said.

2:06 Residents, families say Nova Scotia long-term care worker strike taking toll on them