Williams rejects binding arbitration in dispute with nurses

Newfoundland and Labrador's premier is warning the province's nurses that the offer they're getting now will be jeopardized if they go on strike.  

The Newfoundland and Labrador Nurses' Union is recommending that the province's 5,000 nurses reject the government's latest offer during a strike vote taking place this week. Instead, the union's leadership is calling for binding arbitration to avoid a strike.

In the house of assembly Monday, Premier Danny Williams rejected the call for binding arbitration, and went a step farther by warning that nurses may lose what they are already being offered.

"We can't do any more. The sad thing now is it looks like we are definitely going to a strike if that strike vote gets a majority — and we're going to find these nurses are out for a month — and in fact they are going to actually lose the eight per cent that we've given them in the first year of the template," he said.

The Williams government is offering a 21.5 per cent compounded wage increase over four years, a similar offer made to and accepted by other public sector unions, and acceptable to most nurses.

Earlier in the day, NLNU president Debbie Forward said that binding arbitration is the best way to resolve the dispute.

"That way the people of this province don't have to endure a strike. There is a way to avoid a strike and right now it's up to government," she said.

Forward said if they don't go to binding arbitration now, the government will be forced to go to binding arbitration later — after a strike.  However, the government could also legislate nurses back to work and impose an agreement on them.

"If they do that, they will find themselves in court," she said.

The last nurses' strike was in 1999. Nine days after it started, nurses were legislated back to work.

The union objects to two sections of the proposed four-year-contract, including a market adjustment measurement that would allow the government to pay new nurses more than nurses who are already working — even if they're doing the same work.

The second section concerns a change to loss of earnings benefits that would allow the province to terminate nurses who become permanently disabled on the job, after two years of receiving earnings loss benefits.