Nurses at long-term care homes will receive $10K bonus, Holt says

New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt has clarified who will receive upcoming bonus payments for nurses.

About 10,000 of the approximately 11,000 nurses working in the province are due to receive the $10,000 payments in December or January.

Those excluded from the retention initiative include some who are represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees and are in the middle of a dispute over pension changes, some whose job status is casual and some who work for special care homes.

Some licenced practical nurses, or LPNs, who work in non-unionized nursing homes thought they were excluded as well, but during an interview on Information Morning Fredericton on Friday, Holt said that's not the case.

"LPNs in long-term care are included in this bonus program," she said.

"It applies to unionized and non-unionized LPNs in the publicly funded system or through employers that are publicly funded like the Pine Groves and the Shannexes of the world."

Holt said some nurses had been misinformed because of communication problems on the part of the government.

"We'll take responsibility for the confusion created between the communications we had with the unions and that the unions put out to their members, and the communications from the government to LPNs working in long-term care in places that didn't have any New Brunswick Nurses Union or New Brunswick Union or CUPE representation," she said.

Mychelle Green says she was one of the licensed practical nurses who thought they were excluded.

Green wrote an email to the CBC, saying she works at a Shannex facility and would not get the money.

"It just felt like another sort of let down from the government," said Green, in an interview with CBC.

Holt apologized to Green and others who got the wrong message.

"I'm happy to tell her that she and her colleagues are included in this program," she said.

Nursing homes, such as those operated by Shannex, are often considered to be separate from the publicly funded health-care system, said the premier, but they are publicly funded and subject to mirroring agreements. 

"We have to mirror the conditions in hospitals and nursing homes and make sure that all of those nurses get the same conditions," she said.

Although, Holt added, Shannex does have some special care homes whose nurses are not part of the bonus program.

It depends on the classification of the workplace and the classification of the work, she said.

Holt said her government was working to extend bonus pay to more nurses.

One way it may be able to do so is by creating positions for long-term casual employees, she said.

"In partnership with the regional health authorities and the unions, we're looking at how many of the casual nurses do actually want to be permanent and are looking for that opportunity," she said.

Any casual employees who convert to permanent would be asked to sign a two-year commitment in order to receive the retention payment, a government spokesperson confirmed.

The same is being asked of new hires, said Bruce MacFarlane, a senior communications director for the province.

For most nurses, however, there is no requirement of a future work commitment in order to receive the bonus, he said.

As for unionized licensed practical nurses in nursing homes, as of Friday afternoon they still had no agreement to receive retention payments, said Simon Ouellette, a spokesperson for CUPE.

Everyone wants it, but there's a technical hurdle, said Ouellette.

CUPE's lawyers have advised against engaging in any form of bargaining — which would include signing a letter of intent about the payments — until the government repeals Bill 17 or provides more assurance that it is going to do so, he said.

Bill 17 is the Pension Plan Sustainability and Transfer Act, which forced five public-sector employee groups into a shared-risk pension system

CUPE is challenging it in court. Holt has said she's committed to repealing it.

"We are eagerly awaiting a formal written statement from the government," said Ouellette.