Local 97 – Registered Nurses at CDHA Government Ends Conciliation, NSGEU to Hold Vote on the Employer’s Final Offer

On Friday, this Liberal government passed Bill 1, the Health Authorities Act. The legislation will force you into the NSNU, allow a mediator to select your collective agreement, and prohibits you from ever decertifying from that union. In addition, the legislation includes a stipulation that makes any form of strike illegal until April 2015, after the new health board structure has come into effect.

This effectively nullifies the legislation they currently passed – Bill 37 – which required the NSGEU to go through the lengthy and expensive process of developing an essential services agreement. That matter had recently been referred to the Labour Board to determine a few outstanding items. In the interim, your bargaining committee had returned to conciliation, and completed one day at the table.

During that one day of conciliation, we made absolutely no progress in conciliation. The only real changes the employer made to the offer they gave us on March 31st (the offer you went on strike over) are:

1. They removed the Essential Services proposal from their offer (since the Liberal government took care of that for them by passing Bill 37), and;
2. On the front page they changed one part (it is underlined in the attached document).

Click here to view and download the offer.

While the employer’s final offer contains nothing that addresses your core concerns of scheduling and staffing, we feel it is necessary to bring this agreement forward and allow the membership to vote on the offer.

As such, we will be holding a vote for your local on Thursday, October 9th at the NSGEU office in Burnside (255 John Savage Avenue). You can drop in any time between 10:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. Presentations on the offer will be made between 10:30 a.m. and noon, 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., and 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., during which time you will have a chance to ask questions about Bill 1, as well. Please make every effort to attend: this will be your only opportunity to vote on the offer put forward by your employer.

If you have any questions or concerns about this process, please contact us by calling 902-424-4063 (toll-free 1-877-556-7438) or email inquiry@nsgeu.ca.