Nurses who work for Shared Health begin voting today on whether to accept a revised contract proposal from their employer. If not, they could be headed to a strike.
The 4,100 nurses, many of whom work at the Health Sciences Centre, received an updated contract proposal after they rejected Shared Health’s proposed contract offer in May.
They were the only holdouts among nurses in six health regions. The others accepted the contracts.
The Manitoba Nurses Union declined to comment ahead of the vote results, which won’t be available until next week.
The initial proposal included a controversial full-time incentive which would boost pay for full-time nurses by about $6 an hour.
Part-time nurses aren’t eligible for the pay raise unless they work full-time-equivalent hours, but some nurses have called out the proposal as being unnecessarily divisive.
Many nurses choose to remain in part-time positions to allow them to look after their children, for example, but they do the same work as a full-time nurse.
Under the updated proposal, the full-time incentive has been renamed the “salary enhancement” and will apply to vacation time and pension allowances for nurses who work full-time hours.
Other changes in the updated proposal include rejigging wording to deal with workplace safety and nurse-to-patient ratios.
The contract would establish a committee to look into how many patients one nurse can reasonably be expected to care for at one time.
Under the rejected contract offer, the committee had to be formed within three months of contract ratification and submit its recommendations by May 2026.
The new proposal pledges to strike the committee within 60 days of ratification and submit recommendations by Jan. 1, 2026, with key focus areas determined by the start of next year.
The new proposal also underlines the responsibilities of a joint nurse safety working group and emphasizes the employer’s obligation to provide a safe work environment.
One Shared Health nurse who spoke on the condition of anonymity said she plans to vote against the latest offer, describing the amendments as “just words.”
The proposals lacked limits on mandated overtime and the general wage increases — 11.25 per cent over four years — are not enough to keep pace with the increasing cost of living, the nurse said.
She said there is still an air of uncertainty among nurses and she anticipates the vote will be close.
Many nurses expected much more from this contract based on the promises of the new NDP government, which positioned itself as friendly to health-care workers, said the nurse.
“That’s the most disappointing part for a lot of people… They thought, ‘I’m going to wait and see how this contract looks,’ because there’s hope. And then they were just completely let down,” she said.
“We had a glimmer of hope and I feel that hope has been lost.”
katie.may@freepress.mb.ca
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.