Manitoba health-care strike postponed after tentative deal reached in early morning hours

The unions representing around 25,000 health-care support workers across Manitoba say they're postponing a planned strike after reaching a tentative agreement in the early hours of the day workers were expected to start walking the picket lines.

The agreement was reached at 4:25 a.m. between the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union and employers represented by the Provincial Health Labour Relations Secretariat, the unions said in a news release.

Gina McKay, president of CUPE Manitoba, said the union will soon schedule online information sessions with members to go over the details of the agreement, then offer an electronic ratification vote.

The union has agreed to suspend all job action pending the results of that vote, McKay said.

While the details of the agreement haven't been shared publicly, McKay said the proposed deal prioritizes wages, better working conditions and staff retention, and "recognizes and respects the important work we do as part of the health-care team."

"We hope that this can bring people up enough that they don't have to work two to three jobs and that they can, you know, do the extracurriculars and buy the groceries that they need and ensure that they have housing security," McKay said.

"And so when we're recommending the deal, we're recognizing that this does value and bring workers up."

A spokesperson for Shared Health Manitoba, which employs workers who had been expected to strike, said while health-care services are now largely expected to continue as planned, "some disruption can be expected" for those whose appointments and surgeries may have already been postponed in anticipation of a work stoppage.

Work to resume normal operations and reschedule cancelled appointments will happen over the coming days, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement Tuesday.

The organization is no longer anticipating the volume of cancelled surgeries that was expected in the event of a strike, the spokesperson said.

Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jose Francois previously said approximately 250 elective surgeries could be delayed per week.

The tentative agreement means the workers who were ready to strike this morning will report for their scheduled shifts Tuesday.

Those workers include community and facility support workers at Shared Health Manitoba, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, Prairie Mountain Health and the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority, and community support workers in the Southern Health region, the release said.

That list also includes workers in Manitoba's home care program, health-care aides, laundry aides, housekeeping aides, trades, community health centres, dietary aides, ward clerks and recreation co-ordinators at hospitals, health-care centres and personal care homes.

'Good news': premier

At an unrelated news conference on housing later Tuesday, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew characterized the tentative agreement as the government "keeping our word to the workers."

"We said that we were going to give you a good deal, that we were going to staff up the health-care system and that we're going to do work on mileage and we're delivering on those things," Kinew told reporters, declining to provide details of the agreement before the unions shared them with workers.

"I jumped out of bed this morning saying, 'It's good news for the health-care system.' So we're really happy for all the hard work and we respect the folks on the other side of the table there."

Kinew said the government also plans to keep its word to "fix health care" in Manitoba — a task he said it's already begun by hiring more health-care aides, nurses and doctors, but one that will still take some time to accomplish.

"It's not 'mission accomplished,' but it's a start," he said.

"The problem we have in health care is that the scale of the challenge, much like with homelessness, is so large that it is going to take years of sustained effort in this direction for us to be able to deliver that bright, shining health-care image on the hill that everybody has in mind."