In an effort to wrap up what’s been almost a year of bargaining with their employer, CUPE 5430 is launching a province-wide awareness campaign.

CUPE 5430 represents healthcare workers who work in homecare, hospitals, and long-term care facilities. The union’s president says negotiations between members and their employer have been ‘painfully slow’.

Bashir Jalloh says their collective agreement expired in March of last year, and they have been bargaining since September. He says the employer’s excuse is that the same bargaining agent is being used for all healthcare unions, resulting in a meeting once every two months.

“We prep before we meet with the bargaining committee, but the employer, most of the time, comes to bargaining and uses that time to prep. So, the time allocated to us to bargain is very limited.”

Jalloh says members’ main sticking points include a need for recruitment and retention, fighting against mass-privatization, and addressing a lack of resources for workers.

“If healthcare is to survive in this province, we need to be able to attract people to this province,” he explains.

Union members will be traveling to communities such as Theodore, Lloydminster, Big River, Maidstone, Foam Lake, Oxbow, Regina and Preeceville to collect signatures from both union and community members.

“Our members are eager. We want a speedy conclusion to this. We are going to reach out to the public to see if we can send this campaign and fill it out so we can send this information directly to the government.”

The campaign can also be signed online at action.CUPE5430.ca. Jalloh hopes it will end the SHA’s stalling tactics and result in a deal.