Roughly 120 care home workers marched through the streets of Moncton on Monday before protesting in front of finance minister Ernie Steeves’ office.
CUPE and the New Brunswick Council of Nursing Home Unions (NBCNHU) say a salary increase of six per cent the provincial government is offering over five years is “insulting.”
NBCNHU President Sharon Teare said 17 per cent of nursing home workers in the province had to use food banks over the past year.
Negotiations between the NBCNHU and the New Brunswick Association of Nursing Homes (NBANH) have been stalled since Thursday.
The Department of Social Development funds the homes.
“These nursing home workers have been taken advantage of for many, many years. They’re going so far behind the cost of living,” said CUPE NB President Stephen Drost. “They’re in negotiations and the government is simply not being fair with them. They deserve a fair and reasonable wage.”
The NBCNHU wants to see a retroactive increase of $5 per hour for 2022, followed by two increases of $4 per hour over the two following years according to CUPE spokesperson Simon Ouellette.
“The salaries were already unacceptable prior to the pandemic, and today, the situation has gravely worsened. The province’s enormous budgetary surplus should be used for useful means, such as helping seniors and those caring for them,” he said in French.
The government of New Brunswick posted a record surplus of $862.2 million for the 2022-23 fiscal year, and a $40.3-million surplus for the 2023-2024 fiscal year.
Drost said with the cost of living being significantly higher, “The only thing that hasn’t gone up is wages.”
“The workers have lost a significant amount of buying power, and they just can’t afford to work anymore,” he said.
Drost wouldn’t say whether the workers were considering a strike vote.
Nursing home workers previously voted to strike over wages in 2019, which launched a lengthy legal battle when the province tried to bar them from doing so.
In October 2019, New Brunswick’s Court of Appeal upheld a previous decision indicating prohibiting nursing home workers from striking was unconstitutional.
In November 2019, the province passed an amended version of that law which includes a binding arbitration process and a new mechanism to determine what percentage of employees need to work during a strike.
A representative from the Department of Social Development told Global News in an emailed statement on Monday they were unable to speak to the ongoing negotiations.
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