Your AUPE representatives on the RCIF committee have been meeting nearly bi-weekly with Alberta Health Services (AHS) since December of last year to attempt to develop a plan to spend the $4.3 million dollars allocated to the fund for each of the fiscal years 2022-2023 and 2023-2024.
Notwithstanding significant effort on the part of your representatives on the committee to focus AHS on concrete ways to spend the money that would actually help with recruitment and retention in rural areas, we were faced with consistent pushback from the AHS representatives on the committee. For example, despite the information gathered directly from front-line staff through the joint survey sent out earlier this month, to date AHS has still refused to implement our suggestions.
Unlike the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) which has full voice and vote on the committee, AHS appears determined to let AUPE represent our views and then proceed to ignore them. Tired of hitting our heads against the wall, your AUPE representatives on the RCIF committee sent the following list as our final recommendations on how to spend the money:
1. Scheduling
Review schedules to find ways to achieve work/life balance and less burn-out, including:
- Reduce the occurrence of working 7 days in a row
- Reduce the number of weekends worked
- Evaluate the effectiveness of an 8 hour or 12-hour shift
2. Staffing
- Ensure that staff are replaced when they call in sick
- Follow through on hiring when vacancies have been posted
- Create full-time jobs
3. Recruitment Incentives
- Relocation assistance for individuals who agree to take Permanent Full-time jobs
4. Training Funding
- Provide monetary support for upgrading from HCA to LPN, including tuition
- Introduce Preceptor Pay for HCAs
5. Travel days
- Provide 4 days with pay per year for rural staff to allow for trips out of their community.
We anticipate AHS will decide how they are going to spend the money and will share that information with us at our next meeting in June.
We have advised AHS that we will only attend meetings once per quarter as is required in the Letter of Understanding in the Collective Agreement and have requested that all meetings in the future occur in-person. We have offered dates in June, September, December, and March for our next meetings, and we are waiting to hear back from AHS to confirm same.
As you may hear developments about the RCIF from your UNA co-workers, we felt it important to let you know that our representatives are operating from very different terms of reference than UNA’s are. We will keep you apprised of developments regarding the RCIF as they arise.
In solidarity,
AUPE NEGOTIATING TEAM – ALBERTA HEALTH SERVICES NURSING CARE
Local 041
Brenna Bamber, South Zone representative
Christine Vavrik, South Zone representative
Local 043
Brenda Lussier, North Zone representative
Amanda Matin, North Zone representative
Local 044
Debbi Barnes, Central Zone representative
Judy Fader, Central Zone representative/Bargaining Committee representative
AUPE RESOURCE STAFF
Kate Robinson, Negotiator
Chris Dickson, Negotiator