Enabling Success
A NEW APPROACH BCNU director of servicing Donna Bouzan and other leaders from BCNU met with Health Employers’ Association of BC reps in Burnaby on June 6 to help develop effective NBA contract implementation strategies.
The 2019-2022 Nurses’ Bargaining Association (NBA) provincial collective agreement was ratified on Jan. 21 and came into effect April 1.
The contract contains negotiated memoranda of understanding that require the NBA and health employers to jointly develop implementation plans for much of the negotiated articles of agreement. This work has now begun and BCNU’s elected leaders and servicing staff are on course to implement one of the most innovative collective agreements reached between a public sector union and the provincial government.
In many ways, it’s a project that’s been years in the making.
Ground-breaking language promising safe staffing levels was bargained in 2012 that obligated employers to replace nurses on short- and long-term absences, or call in staff when there was additional patient demand. And for the first time, in-charge nurses had the right to participate in staffing decisions and call in nurses where patient care needs required them.
In 2016 special committees were bargained in order to assess and manage the implementation of this language. But despite these efforts, many challenges remained. Nurses were still short-staffed or were working unpaid to cover shift handovers, and their time and expertise as professionals was not being recognized.
It was time to try something new. During contract negotiations, BCNU’s bargaining committee took a long look at the patterns that have emerged in the management of health-care delivery in the province. “We wanted all parties to be able to work together and realize the contract’s potential to effectively address workplace concerns,” explains BCNU President Christine Sorensen.
"We wanted all parties to work together and realize the contract’s potential to address workplace concerns."
The bargaining committee met with Health Employers’ Association of BC (HEABC) representatives to openly and honestly discuss staffing challenges and other issues that exist in the health-care system, and to think creatively about solutions to shared concerns. It was an effort that allowed each party to gain a greater understanding of the other’s perspective on a problem, and better acknowledge their common objective of safe patient care.
Sorensen says the outcome is a negotiated contract that will fundamentally shift workplace culture in favour of collaboration and problem solving at the local level. She credits BCNU and HEABC CEOs Umar Sheikh and Michael McMillan for the breakthrough. “The two had established a level of trust in their relationship that allowed for this approach to be taken seriously.”
Both Sheikh and McMillan shared their insights during an evening of dialogue that was held for BCNU members at this year’s annual convention. They explained how parties used an interest-based bargaining approach to crafting contract language that better addressed the root causes of the issues and concerns they had brought to the table.
Throughout the evening, they stressed the importance of developing strong relationships between individual nurses and managers tasked with implementing the contract, and said success will be measured in the number of positive, collaborative partnerships created along the way.
The vision is an entirely new way to administer not only a public sector contract, but health-care delivery itself, as health authorities now have financial incentives to collaborate with nurses on the ground at each and every worksite to resolve concerns.
This new collaborative approach will also help shape the future of nurses’ pension and extended health-care benefits as both parties sit down to develop proposals to bring to members over the next 12 months.
In the meantime, BCNU and HEABC negotiators have drafted and signed joint contract interpretations in order to bring clarity to the actual application of the language. Like the contract itself, these documents are key resources for both the employer and our members and are available on the BCNU website.
More joint contract interpretations will be available online in the months to come, and further committee updates that will be shared via BCNU eNews. •
UPDATE (July-Aug 2019)