The arbitrator selected to resolve the 10-month dispute between the Nova Scotia government and 9000 nurses, technologists and other health care employees has decided to side with both the government and the unions. Susan Ashley agreed with the province's 6000 nurses that they should receive a 17% pay increase over 3 years, making them the fifth highest paid in the country. The government had offered 12% over 3 years. For the province's other health care workers, however, Ashley opted for the government's offer of a 7.5% increase over 3 years; they had been seeking 13.5%.
Under the final-offer selection process, the arbitrator had to pick only one of the proposals on the table. Unlike binding arbitration, which allows an arbitrator to select components from different proposals or to develop a new one, final selection forces a decision in favour of only one side.
In this case, the dividing line seemed to be supply and demand. Nova Scotia needs nurses, and Ashley, a lawyer who chairs the Nova Scotia Labour Standards Tribunal, decided that more money will help it retain the nurses it has. “It is important that the wages of Nova Scotia's registered nurses are sufficient to encourage them to stay in this province and to reverse the [outward] flow,” Ashley reported. She also concluded that the growing disparity in wages between registered nurses and licensed practical nurses could pose a problem. “This could tempt cash-strapped health care institutions to seek to download duties of RNs to lower-paid LPNs,” Ashley acknowledged.
Although physicians were not directly involved in the dispute, which led to strike action and back-to-work legislation this summer, they felt its effects. In Halifax alone more than 300 hospital beds were closed, and surgery was limited to “emergency-only” status for 21 days.
The new deals will cost the government approximately $118 million over the next 3 years — $20 million more than it had offered.
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Donalee Moulton
Halifax