With discussions ongoing to reduce the number of bargaining units, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority tried to ease the fears of its biggest unions Tuesday.
Lori Lamont, chief operating officer and VP of Nursing and Heath Professionals, says the organization want to reshape the unions for the better.
“Today we have 85 different bargaining units within the WRHA,” Lamont said. “The legislation will reshape that into seven. In those 85 agreements there is varying language so it means that we need to be attentive to exactly what agreement applies to which staff and which area.”
The WRHA hopes that by reducing the number of bargaining units, staff will have a clearer understanding of their needs.
They feel the way things are now makes it more difficult and causes significant issues internally.
“Our managers need to be familiar with different agreements for similar groups of staff which causes mangers to making errors, assuming that one set of language applies when it doesn’t and that certainly results in some of our grievances,” Lamont said. “So having more standardized language will be easier for our managers to be able to apply and work within the collective agreement consistently.”
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While discussions continue, the WRHA says patients won’t be impacted.
“It’s important that we stay focus on providing care during the hours of operation, and if there is a requirement for us to make an adjustment to ensure that staff get to those votes, then that’s something that we would work collaboratively with them on.”