© Provided by Star Phoenix Premier Scott Moe speaks at a press conference to provide an update on COVID-19 measures in the province. Photo taken in Saskatoon, SK on Friday, September 10, 2021.
The order, issued Monday, quashes negotiations between the Saskatchewan Health Authority and unions representing the province’s health-care workers, who hoped a deal could be reached before swaths of members were potentially moved out of their existing jobs.
“We’re deeply disappointed,” said CUPE 5430 president Sandra Seitz. “We were in discussions with the SHA. We’re disappointed that they would take such a heavy hand.”
Seitz and leaders of other unions — the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses, SEIU-West, SGEU and the Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan — spent days in discussion with the SHA about potentially resurrecting the letter of understanding that allowed thousands of workers to flit between different jobs to meet the needs of the pandemic in its earlier waves.
That was before Saskatchewan lifted its COVID-19 public health measures. Now, public health teams face unprecedented case counts without the full force of the health-care system helping them, and emergency room staff say they’re faced with a wave of patients as chronic fatigue contributes to understaffing.
Premier Scott Moe and SHA CEO Scott Livingstone said on Friday that they had returned to the bargaining table with unions to restore a letter of understanding to divert staff to emergency rooms and other settings. Moe said “help is on the way.”
Livingstone said there was a 160 per cent increase in unfilled shifts in July compared to the same month in 2020, and that COVID-19 case loads are expected to worsen. He said diverting staff would necessitate a “service slowdown” in other parts of the health-care system that, in some cases, will result in 100 per cent of certain services being cancelled.
“Case numbers are going up. They’re going up significantly, and they’ve already occurred — we just don’t know (about) them yet,” Livingstone said.
Union leaders have agreed the workloads in emergency rooms are untenable, but have raised concerns about resurrecting the old letter of understanding as a solution. SUN President Tracy Zambory said in a previous interview that she felt the letter was abused to force staff to frequently do work outside the terms of the collective agreement.
When asked if her union was considering a legal challenge, Seitz said it was too soon to answer.
In a prepared statement, Health Minister Paul Merriman thanked unions and workers, saying “they are all committed to continue problem solving and working together to meet the challenge of the pandemic.”
The Opposition NDP said invoking emergency powers was a sign of the government’s failure to control the spread of COVID-19. In a joint statement, labour critic Carla Beck and health critic Vicki Mowat said Moe “should have been working collaboratively with health-care workers throughout the summer to ensure these necessary agreements were in place.
“Instead, we now have arrangements being imposed on workers, record numbers of new COVID-19 cases, and non-COVID patients being forced to go without needed treatments. All of this could have been prevented if Scott Moe had listened to the experts and focused on controlling the fourth wave.”
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The order, issued Monday, quashes negotiations between the Saskatchewan Health Authority and unions representing the province’s health-care workers, who hoped a deal could be reached before swaths of members were potentially moved out of their existing jobs.
“We’re deeply disappointed,” said CUPE 5430 president Sandra Seitz. “We were in discussions with the SHA. We’re disappointed that they would take such a heavy hand.”
Seitz and leaders of other unions — the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses, SEIU-West, SGEU and the Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan — spent days in discussion with the SHA about potentially resurrecting the letter of understanding that allowed thousands of workers to flit between different jobs to meet the needs of the pandemic in its earlier waves.
That was before Saskatchewan lifted its COVID-19 public health measures. Now, public health teams face unprecedented case counts without the full force of the health-care system helping them, and emergency room staff say they’re faced with a wave of patients as chronic fatigue contributes to understaffing.
Premier Scott Moe and SHA CEO Scott Livingstone said on Friday that they had returned to the bargaining table with unions to restore a letter of understanding to divert staff to emergency rooms and other settings. Moe said “help is on the way.”
Livingstone said there was a 160 per cent increase in unfilled shifts in July compared to the same month in 2020, and that COVID-19 case loads are expected to worsen. He said diverting staff would necessitate a “service slowdown” in other parts of the health-care system that, in some cases, will result in 100 per cent of certain services being cancelled.
“Case numbers are going up. They’re going up significantly, and they’ve already occurred — we just don’t know (about) them yet,” Livingstone said.
Union leaders have agreed the workloads in emergency rooms are untenable, but have raised concerns about resurrecting the old letter of understanding as a solution. SUN President Tracy Zambory said in a previous interview that she felt the letter was abused to force staff to frequently do work outside the terms of the collective agreement.
When asked if her union was considering a legal challenge, Seitz said it was too soon to answer.
In a prepared statement, Health Minister Paul Merriman thanked unions and workers, saying “they are all committed to continue problem solving and working together to meet the challenge of the pandemic.”
The Opposition NDP said invoking emergency powers was a sign of the government’s failure to control the spread of COVID-19. In a joint statement, labour critic Carla Beck and health critic Vicki Mowat said Moe “should have been working collaboratively with health-care workers throughout the summer to ensure these necessary agreements were in place.
“Instead, we now have arrangements being imposed on workers, record numbers of new COVID-19 cases, and non-COVID patients being forced to go without needed treatments. All of this could have been prevented if Scott Moe had listened to the experts and focused on controlling the fourth wave.”
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