Health union hearings to sort bargaining units get underway

Hearings got underway Monday that will assign union representation for 24,000 Nova Scotia health care workers who must be sorted into four bargaining units.

Arbitrator Jim Dorsey must also pick a union that will represent each of those bargaining units.

Dorsey already filed a report on the union restructuring, giving the Nova Scotia government the green light to reduce the number of bargaining units that represent workers in the health-care sector from 50 to four.

The report did not set out which workers should be represented by which unions.

The workers will be divided up into support, clerical, health care and nurse units.

Monday, Dorsey began sorting which workers belong in the support bargaining unit. The painstaking process will be repeated three more times this week.

Unions have bitterly fought the forced streamlining with each of the four current health care unions promised one bargaining unit.

Could lose thousands of members

That will create winners and bigger losers, especially the largest public sector union, the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union, which stands to lose thousands of members.

Lana Payne with Unifor says there may be a way to avoid that.

"He (Jim Dorsey) has ruled that under Bill 1, there is an ability to create a super amalgamated union in which more than one union can participate in," she said.

On Thursday and Friday, Dorsey will deal with one of the most contentious issues, the question of what happens to the more than 9,000 Nova Scotia nurses.

It will also be a challenge to a McNeil government regulation passed last week that tips the balance in favour of the Nova Scotia Nurses' Union.

NSGEU says change unconstitutional

The regulation makes the IWK and the new provincial health authority into a single employer. The move satisfies one of Dorsey's conditions that a union needs a clear majority of workers before it can be picked as a bargaining agent.

The regulation ensures a majority for the Nova Scotia Nurses' Union, the McNeil government's preferred pick.

"Our position is that we represent the nurses bargaining unit," says Nova Scotia Nurses' Union president Janet Hazelton.

The Nova Scotia Government Employees Union has challenged the rule change as unconstitutional.

"The health minister and certainly the premier have made statements about where they would like certain classifications to go," said president Joan Jessome.

"But they've also appointed an arbitrator and gave him the power to make those decisions and we're going to leave it in the hands of the arbitrator."

On Tuesday, Dorsey will hear from provincial lawyers.