On ESAs, Mediation, and Job Action
Executive Officer Town Hall Summary from March 17th:
We cannot start formal mediation until our Essential Services Agreement (ESA) is filed with the Labour Relations Board. The ESA lays out the bare minimum level of staffing that must be maintained during a strike or lockout. We have agreed to the staffing levels but the last thing that hasn’t been decided yet is who is responsible for scheduling essential workers during a strike. AHS want HSAA to do the scheduling and vice versa. The issue of who is responsible for scheduling is currently in front of an arbitrator with a decision expected within 1-5 weeks. HSAA has decided to accept whatever decision the arbitrator makes so that we don’t delay formal mediation any longer.
Fenton Corey, the LRO who helped create our ESA, explained that our ESA allows a lot of healthcare workers to walk off the job in the event of a strike. Even a profession like EMS, which I had previously said would be 100% staffing, will be able to have 20% of staff walk off the job on top of any normal vacancies. Fenton assured us that if we go on strike it will grind the healthcare system to a halt. The current ESA is designed to cover a 7 day period but it can be extended as needed. The hope is obviously that a healthcare strike would not last very long.
Even though we have seen other unions, including UNA, agree to tentative CBA’s at the bargaining table. The reality is that HSAA is still very far apart with AHS and there is no guarantee that we will be able to reach a tentative CBA in formal mediation. In other words, this is the closest we have ever been to a strike and it’s very possible that we may end up going on strike. HSAA is currently ordering things that we will need to form picket lines and is going to look at starting to train “picket captains” to help organize our picket lines.
If we do go on strike, we will be able to rotate people between picket lines and being an essential worker since we can only have 20% of staff walking off the job every shift. This will hopefully help relieve some of the financial strain of going on strike for our members. Keep in mind though that going on strike is hard on everyone and is not meant to be a pleasant experience. We just watched CUPE education assistants go on strike for 9 weeks through the winter and I know that was really hard on them but they did a great job sticking together and got a better CBA as a result.
I asked during the Q and A how disruptive HSAA is willing to let our members get. I specifically asked about the possibility of ordering arm bands that paramedics can wear at work that say something like “fair deal” or “strike ready”. I was told that they liked the arm band idea and they were not opposed to doing something like that. I have since sent a follow up email to Mike Parker formally asking for our union to buy arm bands that we can wear at work in solidarity. Our LUE has also set aside money in our budget to pursue something like this but if we can get HSAA to bulk order them for multiple Locals then I think that would be better.
In terms of timelines, we are likely looking at May or June for a possible strike vote if we are unable to reach a deal during formal mediation.
