Nurses protest outside Minister Toews’ Town Hall to voice concerns over recent bargaining negotiations

Several nurses gathered outside of the Sexsmith Community Hall Tuesday to greet Alberta Finance Minister and Grande Prairie-Wapiti MLA Travis Toews as he arrived for a Town Hall he was hosting.

Members of the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) rallied outside of the Town Hall as collective bargaining negotiations continue between Alberta Health Services (AHS) and UNA.

Negotiations currently stand with the province asking UNA members to take a three per cent wage rollback.

Among those who attended was Jerry Macdonald, who is a nurse and the President of United Local Nurses 207. He says the province calling for cuts for its over 30,000 members of registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses is unacceptable right now.

“They’ve (the government) given direction to the employers to ask for significant cuts, as well as direction to cut 500 FTEs of registered nurses and psychiatric nurses around the province over the next two years, and they have not looked back on that,” explained Macdonald.

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“We are looking at this as actions taken by this government to disrespect and harass the nurses of the province who have been the pandemic heroes for the last 18 months. It’s appalling.”

Macdonald also feels negotiations have only gotten worse over the last 18 months, after first going to the bargaining table in January of 2020.

“Back in January of 2020 when they gave us our ingoing package, they presented us with 250 rollbacks, some of which would take our working conditions back to the 1950s,” said Macdonald

“When they came back to the bargaining table in June, they presented us with a five per cent rollback. Three per cent in terms of the wage credit and two per cent from deleting the lump sum payments. Overall, they’ve gone backward, which is textbook bargaining and bad faith when it comes to labour relations.”

Toews addressed the crowd of health-care workers when he arrived at the Town Hall and thanked them for their work.

While he thanked the nurses for coming out, Toews told EverythingGP the province’s ask right now is not unreasonable.

“I appreciated the nurses coming out today and I think I had a really constructive conversation with them. It was important I could hear their viewpoints,” expressed Toews.

“We also have fiscal realities in this province right now. We can no longer afford to be an outlier and that’s really across the board,” added Toews. “We’re working as a government to thoughtfully, carefully and compassionately bring our costs down overtime to compare with other provinces and our broader public sector mandate is consistent with that goal.”

Toews added it was great to finally get back out and listen to his constituents voice their concerns about what has transpired over the last several years.

RELATED: United Nurses of Alberta president questions rollback rationale