Competitive wage goal for health workers

The Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations (SAHO) is introducing competitive wages and benefits for non-unionized employees after a market survey showed a gap between their pay and market value.

“Over the whole group of employees, which is about 2,500, represents an average five per cent increase across the whole group,” Susan Antosh, President and CEO of SAHO said.

However not everyone would get a five per cent increase, Antosh said.

“When we did the market survey we discovered that in fact there was quite a lot of difference. Some people were in fact paid within the market already and others were quite a distance away from being paid based on the market,” she said.

The plan will be retroactive in part to Apr.1, 2010 and won’t fully be implemented until April.
Package considered unfair

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Cathy Dickson, president of the Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan (HSAS), which represents 3,000 healthcare professionals province-wide, has some concerns about the fairness of the increase because HSAS employees have been without a contract for 22 months.

She said the package is greater than any union worker receives and was made without any regard for HSAS’s suggestions.

“They asked us to look at comparative groups, other unions that have workers that are equally trained the way we are, with retention issues … and they have basically said no to everything we have brought forward to them,” Dickson said.

According to Antosh, it was just early in January that HSAS gave SAHO their wage demands.

Although we’ve been bargaining over the 22 month period, Antosh said.

SAHO is meeting with the Health Sciences Union on Jan. 27 and is expected to bring a financial offer.

Dickson said they are quite interested to see what that is going to be considering SAHO made the announcement of a market based compensation plan for out-of-scope employees just days before they are set to meet.

sfroese@panow.com