Home Care Bargaining Achieves Important Gains

The NSGEU currently represents close to 1,600 Home Care CCAs in 14 different locals, working in communities from Yarmouth to Cape Breton. At the start of this round of bargaining, employees in eight of those locals did not have “guaranteed hours of work,” which means that they had be available for up to 14 hours per day but may only be scheduled for a few hours. In some agencies, if a client visit was canceled, the employee had to be willing to pick up visits at any time, over a 7-14 day period to ensure they get paid. Employees without a “guaranteed” shift were never certain what to expect on their pay cheques, as client cancellations and other circumstances beyond their control impacted their wages.

With staffing deficits at an all-time high, Home Support CCAs throughout the province expressed that they were feeling burnt out by their workload and members made clear to the union that they had a number of expectations for this round of bargaining.

The union entered bargaining with a goal to achieve guaranteed hours for all Home Support CCA members. Instead of having a lead table, the union bargained all 14 locals (at nine different tables) to make clear to government the entire sector was standing together to achieve necessary improvements.

After almost two years of bargaining, the union is close to achieving a number of improvements for all Home Support members.

For CCAs in Locals 30, 32, 36, 37, 39, 76, 83 and 84 the Union is negotiating significant changes in the hours of work language that will put a guaranteed hours arrangement in place for all permanent employees.