Bargaining Update—Millrise Senior’s Community: Local 048, Chapter 034
Your negotiating team at Millrise Senior’s Village is continuing to bargain with the employer and is applying for informal mediation in order to advance the process.
After a series of delays related to COVID outbreaks and employer foot-dragging, your negotiating team met again with the employer in May. The employer, rather than addressing our concerns, presented us with a repeat of their proposal from last year — with minor changes on some items, including:
- Article 2- Employer contact information
- Article 3- the designation of HCAs as health care professionals
- Article 5- member electronic contact information
- Article 9- trial period language
- Article 13- pick up shifts and seniority
- Article 14- pay statement information
- Article 22- annual vacation earning entitlements
- Article 23- named holiday pay for part-time and casual employees.
Your negotiating team responded by advancing a counter-proposal with our “final” position on a number of disputed items. We expected the employer to come back to us with a full package proposal, including monetary items.
On June 14 and 15, we met with the employer again. They tabled a new non-monetary document which did not cover overtime.
We know that our co-workers are expecting a fair contract — that means a deal which replicates the conditions in comparable care homes in Calgary. We know that we deserve to have, at minimum, the same conditions that are standard across the industry in our city. We are building on the work of our first collective agreement, which was settled by an enhanced mediator’s report.
We know that our co-workers are frustrated by the delays, and we’re frustrated too. We want this round of negotiations—which began when our last agreement expired on Dec. 31, 2019—to come to an end. We faced months of delays in the beginning of the COVID crisis and have had the employer unilaterally cancel dates on us in the time since.
Along with our contract negotiations, we are also negotiating an Essential Services Agreement (ESA), which would govern how many staff must remain on site in the event of a job action like a strike or a lockout. ESA negotiations are expected to take a long time.
That’s why we’re moving into informal mediation—we hope that by bringing in a third party, we can speed up the negotiations process, and bring this chapter to a close.
In the meantime, it’s more important than ever that you support your negotiating team. Through our solidarity, we can defeat any attempt by the employer to slow this process down. The power is in our hands as workers—but to wield it, we need to stand together.
If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, then don’t hesitate to reach out to your negotiating team.
Your Negotiating Team
Funso Obatusin, 587-893-0647 funsoobatusin@gmail.com
Mileth Gloriana, m_gloriani101813@yahoo.com
Jummai Babalola, jumaijesus@yahoo.com
AUPE Staff Resources
John Wevers, Negotiator, 780-238-4767 j.wevers@aupe.org
Michelle Szalynski, Organizer, 403-634-8262 m.szalynski@aupe.org
Jon Milton, Communications Officer, j.milton@aupe.org