'Be able to keep our people here': CUPE health care workers in Yorkton asking for wage increases

CUPE health care rally in Yorkton WATCH: On Tuesday, members with CUPE 5430 held a rally in Yorkton to ask for wage increases. Sierra D’Souza Butts has the story.

Union representatives from CUPE 5430 gathered at Yorkton Regional Health Centre on Tuesday to raise awareness about the impact the cost of living has had on health care workers.

“We want to negotiate the higher wages for our members so they can stay in this province,” President of CUPE 5430 Bashir Jalloh told CTV News.

The union represents over 13,600 health care providers across the province in classifications such as clerical, technical, nursing, support and plant operations.

Currently they are in the process of contract negotiations with the Government of Saskatchewan, and are asking for an increase in wages to help deal with the impacts of the rising cost of living on employees, along with recruitment and retention challenges for health care workers in rural communities.

"If you want to be able to have people take a career path in health care, to recruit people, to have them stay here, you have to do something about their compensation,” Jalloh expressed.

“If not, they are going to leave this province because most classifications in other provinces, those people are getting paid more.”

Jalloh added that increasing the wage for workers will attract them to stay in Saskatchewan which will help solve the shortage of staffing issues rural hospitals continue to face.

“What is happening is our folks are finishing school, they come here they use the system to get experience and once they get experience they are leaving which is not fair,” he explained. “We want to be able to keep our people here.”

The Ministry of Health provided a statement to CTV News saying, “The provincial government remains committed to building and supporting a sustainable and responsive health system today and into the future. A key priority for the Ministry of Health is to deliver the highest quality health care to Saskatchewan patients with our partners and service providers.”

Additionally, the province highlighted its $142 million investment in the 2024-25 provincial budget to support the Health Human Resources (HHR) Action Plan which focuses on recruiting, training, and retaining health-care workers.

While adding that, “the Government of Saskatchewan is aware of the issues being raised by CUPE. However, contract negotiations are currently underway and it would be inappropriate to comment on the bargaining process.”

CUPE 5430 met at the bargaining table with Saskatchewan’s government from June 4 to June 6, however Jalloh said time was spent preparing for bargaining instead of negotiating.

“Right now we’re at the bargaining table, but it’s extremely frustrating, the delays,” Jalloh explained.

“We have two problems at the bargaining table right now, one of them is employers availability. The employer is not available to bargain, we can only meet with them once every two months and when we meet with them, they are using that time to bargain to do their bargaining preparation [instead].”