The B.C. Nurses’ Union has agreed to end job action and accept a mediated settlement with the Health Employers’ Association of B.C.
The deal was negotiated by Vince Ready and Amanda Rogers, the same labour mediators who successfully brought an end to last year’s public service strike.
At more than three weeks, it was the longest nursing strike in B.C. history. Because many nurses operate as essential workers, job action generally included refusing to work overtime or complete non-nursing tasks.
Rotating picket lines were also set up in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island.
“Our members changed the conversation by forcing government and health employers to confront the realities of nursing and the challenges facing our public health-care system,” BCNU president Adriane Gear said in a Friday afternoon news release.
The union did not release details of the substance of the deal, other than to say it addressed some of the major concerns that led nurses to vote down a previous tentative agreement struck by the union with the employers’ association on May 22.
This includes addressing workplace violence in health care and the prevalence of nurses performing non-nursing duties, which the union says continue to pull them away from patient care.
The B.C. government pledged to continue working with the union and mediators on these issues. A statement from the Finance Ministry says the strike has been a “challenging situation” for nurses, patients and everyone working in the health-care sector.
Both sides accepted the recommendations and plan to enter into a binding arbitration process to resolve outstanding compensation matters with the aid of the mediators. This process is not expected to be finished until the fall.
Nurses were offered the same 12 per cent over four years as other public-sector bargaining units. But nurses were not as focused on pay, with the union citing difficult working conditions and high nurse-to-patient ratios as primary complaints.
While many of these other agreements contain “me too” clauses stipulating that if another public sector union gets more money, they get the same, this does not include amounts that exceed theirs that are a product of binding arbitration agreements.
So if the nurses end up getting a bigger raise than other public sector unions, those other workers will not get a matching raise.