Improvements in benefits, premiums also coming for workers
About 65,000 hospital workers will see their wages increase by 3% in each of the next two years after an arbitrator awarded two-year contracts to two unions.
Workers represented by the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions-CUPE (OCHU-CUPE) and SEIU Healthcare will see a 6% wage increase, decided Arbitrator William Kaplan:
CUPE arbitration decision:
Effective Sept. 29, 2023 – 3.00%.
Effective Sept. 29, 2024 – 3.00%.
SEIU arbitration decision:
Effective Jan. 1, 2024 – 3.00%.
Effective Jan. 1, 2025 – 3.00%.
The contracts also include improvements to health and dental benefits, enhancements to weekend, evening and night premiums, and pay for periods of quarantine or isolation due to outbreaks of communicable illnesses.
"Significant improvements to dental and other benefits, real wage increases, and substantial adjustments to premiums will all contribute to making these frontline hospital staff feel valued and help them to better cope with the cost-of-living crisis that all working people are facing,” said Michael Hurley, president, OCHU-CUPE.
“New measures to police agency nursing profits, review contracted-out work, and provide stable weekend staffing are also good steps forward.”
Union collaboration helps increase wages
This comes after a June 2023 Kaplan decision that awarded these same workers a 6.25% retroactive wage increase following the defeat of Doug Ford's unconstitutional Bill 124.
In January, Kaplan awarded nurses (RNs) and health-care professionals with average wage increases of 11% over two years following the overturning of Bill 124. In February, Ontario’s Court of Appeal released its decision on the controversial Bill 124, finding the law that would cap public sector workers’ wages to be unconstitutional.
OCHU-CUPE and SEIU also achieved mandatory reporting around agency usage, which financial reporting makes clear “is an expensive band-aid to the long-running staffing crisis,” said the unions.
The award also provides for a review of healthcare work which has been privatized, with a view to assessing the viability of bringing it back within Ontario's public hospitals.
“After our unions delivered Premier Ford a defeat on Bill 124, this award is a win for hospital workers who have been holding the healthcare system together with sacrifice and grits, and it's a brutal recognition that hospital services will indeed collapse without better wages for frontline staff,” said Sharleen Stewart, president, SEIU Healthcare.
This past fall, OCHU-CUPE and SEIU Healthcare – along with Unifor – proposed to bargain jointly with the Ontario Hospital Association. The proposal, however, was denied but the unions signed a solidarity pact and maintained collaboration and coordination across the bargaining tables.
Previously, Alberta introduced a new compensation model for doctors in the province. The province had earlier announced it is investing $2 million through the Nurse Practitioner Association of Alberta, which will help to implement a new compensation model for nurse practitioners in the province.
