Yellowknife nurse supports move to give her profession its own collective agreement

A longtime Yellowknife nurse says her profession needs its own collective agreement in the N.W.T. to address the current nursing shortage the territory is experiencing.

Sheila Laity, who has worked as a nurse in the N.W.T. since 1992, said a private member's bill raised last week could address issues that current nurses are facing and help recruit more staff. 

Yellowknife North MLA Shauna Morgan tabled the private member's bill last Thursday to change the N.W.T. Public Service Act to allow nurses to form their own bargaining unit. 

N.W.T. nurses, along with the vast majority of unionized government employees, are represented by the Union of Northern Workers (UNW), which is set out by the Public Service Act.

Laity said the current collective agreement — negotiated by the Union of Northern Workers and the territorial government — doesn't take into account the unique situations nurses face. 

The bill is still in its early draft stages. If there's support for it, there would be formal public hearings and consultations with stakeholders about it.

Challenges tough to address through current bargaining

Laity said recruiting nurses to the North has always been difficult, and with an international nursing shortage it's become even harder. 

"The average Canadian wants to live within 100 kilometers of the U.S. border in a large metropolitan centre. We're in small places, it's winter a lot of months of the year," she said. 

Laity was once the UNW's first vice-president and then later a regional vice-president, and she remembers discussions about a separate collective agreement for nurses dating back to 1993. She said addressing the barriers nurses face in the collective agreement is a challenge with bargaining in its current form.  

She said every local unit, which is a group of unionized employees, sends representatives to a bargaining conference. Each local unit brings a few priorities and all the attendees at the conference then vote on which priorities to move forward with. 

Laity said she's been to conferences in which there are only two nurses in a room of about 40 people – making it hard for nurses to advance their priorities.

Laity said even though they would have a separate collective agreement, the nurses' bargaining unit could still be a part of the UNW.

Union exec says changing legislation a 'threat' to northern workers

An executive with the Public Service Alliance of Canada North — which the UNW is a part of — said she's not opposed to nurses having their own collective agreement, but she does take issue with Morgan's bill. 

Regional executive vice-president Josée-Anne Spirito said giving that power to the legislature would open a "door that is dangerous for every worker across the territory." A representative of workers in all three territories, she also calls it a "threat" to all northern workers. 

Spirito, who has been a nurse for 15 years herself, took particular issue with the timeline of the bill.

Morgan's proposal says the territory has a seven-month window to make change before collective bargaining between the territory and the UNW resumes. It says making legislative changes during negotiations would be politically challenging. 

"This now-or-never type of attitude is definitely a big concern," said Spirito. "Rushing it with the current documents that are being tabled raises a lot of red flags in terms of the implementation of this bill and the end result and the impact on our members.

"We want nurses to be better supported. We know that the working conditions right now, especially at Stanton [Territorial Hospital], are less than acceptable. We know how desperate it is, how important it is that we make these changes as soon as possible."

But, she said, rushing a bill could have the potential to make things worse down the line.