Across the province, unions representing health care workers will begin a vote on Monday to decide whether to go on strike.
This comes after the coalition of unions representing health care workers in Nova Scotia and the province and employers couldn’t reach a collective agreement deal.
The province and employers walked away from the negotiation table on Wednesday.
Just an hour after the unions presented a counter offer to the province’s comprehensive settlement, the province announced they wouldn’t have any further responses that day and didn’t know how or when they’d respond, the Nova Scotia Government Employees Union said in a media release.
“It is unconscionable that these health care ‘heroes’ can suddenly go to ‘zeroes’ at the bargaining table,” said NSGEU President Jason MacLean. “These workers certainly deserve to be shown more respect from their employer and government. Instead, this government offered them less than they gave other public sector workers in the last two years.”
The Health Care Council of Unions (NSGEU, Unifor and CUPE), represents approximately 7,500 health care workers working in a wide variety of roles at NSH throughout the province and the IWK.
The Council will be holding a strike vote with its members starting next week. NSGEU’s vote will start Monday and CUPE’s vote starts Tuesday.
They expect to have the results of that strike vote on July 9th, which could put health care workers in a legal strike position as early as the third week of July.
