Thousands of Sask. workers in limbo as negotiations stalled

REGINA Thirty-six of the province’s 40 public-sector employee groups — totalling 64,056 workers — currently have expired contracts.

Teachers, health-care workers (including nurses) and government employees are among those who do not have new contracts.

It has been 1,317 days (or three years and seven months) since the contract for the Professional Association of Interns of Saskatchewan (PAIRS) expired, giving way to the longest-standing negotiation in the province.

On average, the public-sector contracts have been expired for about 497 days or one year and four months.

Finance Minister Donna Harpauer says the most concerning are those, like PAIRS, that have been open for a longer period of time.

“Thankfully, there has been no active strikes and negotiations still go on, and I have confidence in the collective-bargaining tables,” she said.

NDP MLA Warren Mccall said the slow pace of negotiations “shows a fundamental disrespect that the Sask. Party has when it comes to the working men and women of the public service in Saskatchewan.”

But Harpauer says it’s “no secret” negotiations languished longer than normal at some tables because the province was originally proposing a 3.5-per-cent wage reduction for Saskatchewan’s 64,577 public-sector workers, as part of the government’s plan to reduce the provincial deficit.

Largely because there was no appetite for such a rollback at negotiating tables, that plan has since been abandoned.

“Now that we’ve moved past that, I’m hoping for some ratification as we move forward,” says Harpauer, who says she has some frustration because many union members still think that measure

This is a government that fundamentally doesn’t believe in the value of public service …

is in place.

“Hopefully as that message gets out there more and more, it will help the members understand where the negotiating is at, and they can work with their respective unions,” she said.

The province now aims for $70 million in savings — $35 million in each of the next two fiscal years — but Harpauer says that measure is not linked at all to ongoing negotiations.

With 817 days until the next provincial election, Harpauer answered with a simple “yes” when asked if she hoped to have negotiations concluded before Saskatchewan residents next head to the polls.

But there are no imminent signs of any contracts being ratified soon, and the province’s financial situation has not rebounded significantly enough to allow the government to offer substantial wage increases.

(Details of what is being offered at individual negotiating tables are difficult to nail down, but deals offering no or very small increases have already been rejected by some employee groups.)

Mccall contends the province keeps coming up with new ways of getting everyday Saskatchewan people to pay for the government’s own bad decisions and mistakes.

“In terms of the different runs that they’ve taken at the working men and women of the public service, this is just another indication of that dynamic.

“This is a government that fundamentally doesn’t believe in the value of public service and by extension the men and women who do that work,” he said.

“If you truly value the work that these tens of thousands of men and women are doing for the people of Saskatchewan, the hard work that they do day in and day out, if you value that, then you’re not going to have a collective-bargaining situation where the vast majority of those folks aren’t covered by an agreement, either by neglect or design.”