After years of negotiations, people who work to support Alberta’s health-care workers have voted to accept a new deal with Alberta Health Services, though the union representing them suggested agreeing to the deal was not an easy decision to make.
“AUPE (Alberta Union of Provincial Employees) members working for Alberta Health Services general support services have reluctantly voted to accept a new collective agreement after years of difficult negotiations,” the union said in a news release issued Monday.
The four-year agreement, which ends March 31, 2024, sees workers receive no raises in the first two years of the deal before getting a 1.25 per cent increase in Year 3 and a two per cent wage hike in Year 4. The deal also sees AHS hit pause on the privatization of services provided by members. In recent years, decisions have been made to outsource more laundry work and retail food services work in Alberta’s health-care system to private companies.
READ MORE: Thousands of Alberta Health Services jobs to be cut in effort to save $600M annually
AUPE vice-president Darren Graham said the 32,000 support services workers that the union represents have positions that can range from housekeepers to maintenance staff to clerical and administrative duties as well as jobs in food services.
“(These members) allow our nurses and doctors to be able to do their jobs,” he said. “We are pretty much everything that is not hands on patients.”
Graham added that while the new deal is “not a rich agreement by any means,” especially considering some workers’ wages start at just $17 an hour, the new agreements means “our members have the ability to take a little bit of a breath until March 30, 2024.”
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“These are the folks that showed up to work each day to serve the province,” he added. “I’m proud to be one of them.
“They’re the hardworking folks that make sure the operations keep running so the doctors and nurses can do their jobs.
“The cost of inflation and goods going up in this year alone have well outweighed these increases here. Some of our members live very close to that poverty line, if not below it.”
Graham said he fears the further privatization of AHS jobs, like in retail food services, will simply result in “lower-wage positions without benefits” that see people working for multinational companies.
In a news release issued last month about further outsourcing retail food services in Calgary and Edmonton, AHS said the transition to private service delivery will “impact approximately 240 full-time, part-time and casual employees.”
At the time, AHS’ interim president and CEO Mauro Chies said further outsourcing retail food services “could provide $3 million per year in revenue that will be used to support core clinical services.”
“Redirecting health-care dollars to front lines allows us to continue to provide high-quality health care to Albertans,” Chies said.
At one point during negotiations last summer, the AUPE told Global News that general support services workers were being offered a four per cent wage cut in Year 1 of a new deal followed by consecutive years of no changes to wages.
READ MORE: Alberta health-care support staff presented with 4% wage cut: Union
The deal announced Monday will see AHS provide support services staff with one per cent lump sum payments for 2021 to acknowledge the work they did during the COVID-19 pandemic, though Graham noted the union would have preferred salary increases.
The AUPE said Monday that it would share more details about the lump sum payments with its members once it has confirmed that AHS will ratify the new agreement.
The AUPE said the new agreement also saw Lamont Health Care Centre — located northeast of Edmonton — be incorporated into the AUPE’s general support services collective agreement with AHS.
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