First, the Nurses' Bargaining Association would like to congratulate the HEU and the HSA on their tentative collective agreements. Your bargaining committee is analyzing the details of these two collective agreements to understand the improvements in contract language and the financial costing of the packages.

The same process has been utilized to understand the doctors' new agreement. Although the doctors' agreement has been advertised as a 19.1% increase, it's unlikely that any doctor will meet the requirements to receive all of this sizeable increase.

Our negotiations are proceeding as planned, on schedule and on topic. Our discussion areas are:

1. non-monetary contract proposals
2. policy discussions to improve nurses' practice environments
3. workload measurement tools and patient ratios
4. wage increases, premiums, bonus money, car allowance and pensions.

This week we have been working on part one – non-monetary contract proposals – and we expect to conclude agreements on all the non-monetary items by this weekend. The concluded items will include modest improvements in the following areas:

• shift scheduling
• violence protection
• occupation health and safety
• grievance and arbitration procedures
• classifications and job postings

Next week, we will continue on parts two and three:

Part 2 – Policy discussions to improve nurses' practice environments
Part 3 – Workload measurement and patient ratios

Once there has been agreement on these areas we will move to monetary, benefit and pension issues.

Our goal continues to be to have a collective agreement concluded by March 31, 2006.

Finally, we would like to thank our members who have been communicating with our committee this week and to express our appreciation for their continued support.

The following document is available in a printable PDF format (116 kb)
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