(rdnewsNOW/Sheldon Spackman)

By rdnewsNOW staff

noon hour march

Nurses rally in Red Deer during province-wide demonstration

Feb 13, 2020 | 3:20 PM

Nearly 90 local union members took their health care and bargaining concerns to the constituency office of Red Deer-South MLA Jason Stephan on Thursday.

The noon hour information walk that began at City Hall was one of 33 held across the province in 25 communities.

Members of United Nurses of Alberta described it as a pre-Valentine’s Day message outlying the concerns of more than 30,000 Registered Nurses and Registered Psychiatric Nurses represented by UNA and members of other health care unions.

Union officials say the goal is to show their support for publicly delivered health care and all front-line workers.

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UNA officials say most Alberta health care workers, including their own members, are facing the possibility of layoffs and major rollbacks of contract provisions. They claim as many as 750 RNs and RPNs could be laid off in the next year due to downsizing planned by Alberta Health Services.

Formal bargaining for UNA’s Provincial Collective Agreement began on Jan. 15, with officials saying public-sector employers are proposing four years of pay freezes and rollbacks to the current collective agreement.

Claire Goertzen, vice-president of UNA Local 218, says privatization costs patients money.

“We’ve been down this road before,” she exclaimed. “Cutting services at the front line is definitely going to affect clients’ care.”

Chris Nielsen, NDP MLA for Edmonton-Decore and Red Tape Reduction critic attended Thursday’s walk in support of those concerns.

“This is not fear and smear that the government has been accusing us of, it’s now black and white in their own documents from the reports that they’ve brought out,” said Nielsen. “This is going to put patient health care at risk. This is not what health care is about here in Alberta.”

Red Deer South UCP MLA Jason Stephan addressed participants at his constituency office. He told them the government is looking to gain control over the cost of health care services, which he notes has exceeded inflation and population growth.

“We need to make sure that we’re sustainable in our health care costs,” he explained. “We’re not actually reducing health care in terms of balancing the budget, we’re actually increasing it over our mandate.”

“Our focus is in fact making sure that the limited resources that we have from a taxpayer perspective are provided and focused on the front line, to again make sure that we reduce the cost of services, as opposed to the services themselves,” added Stephan.

Stephan pointed to the MacKinnon Report’s findings that compensation for many Alberta workers was much higher than the comparative provinces of B.C., Ontario and Quebec.

“Looking at the overall state of the economy where many Albertans have lost their jobs and suffered significant reductions in pay, the salary arbitrator said that there should not be an increase,” said Stephan. “We were elected to balance the budget within four years. Again, our focus is not reducing services, it is making sure that the cost of services is sustainable.”

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the Alberta government to rein in benefits paid to the United Nurses of Alberta during their on-going labour negotiations.

“Not only are Alberta’s government nurses receiving big salaries compared to their counterparts in other provinces, they’re also receiving golden benefits that must be scaled back,” says Franco Terrazzano, Alberta Director for the CTF, in a release. “Premier Jason Kenney needs to pull Albertans out of the $70-billion debt hole and reining in these golden benefits is the perfect place to start.”

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