The government has appealed that ruling, with hearings set for later this month, but in the meantime, the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the SEIU Healthcare union are the latest of those affected by the law to have successfully argued in arbitration for more money.
Kaplan also awarded an additional $2 to the predominant hourly rate for registered practical nurses and increases to shift and weekend premiums as well as some benefits. Registered nurses, who got pay boosts in a separate decision, were not included in the latest arbitration decision.
Increases in compensation should help with the recruitment and retention “crisis” in Ontario’s hospitals, the arbitrator wrote.
“Wage increases can reasonably be expected to keep people in the workforce, attract people who have left to return, and incentivize future employees,” Kaplan wrote.
Some hospitals have been using agency nurses to shore up staffing, paying them double or triple the collective agreement rates “because compensation is a, if not the, key driver in attracting employees,” he wrote.
“The province is offering a buffet of policies and programs — almost all financial in nature — to incentivize employees to careers in healthcare because of its axiomatic conclusion that this approach will work; at least that is the underlying premise,” Kaplan wrote.
“The participating hospitals suggest that compensation increases will not solve these problems, but this submission fails in a context when many of their members are using financial incentives to attract and retain staff, and the government is adopting and backstopping this same approach.”
“That said, while collective bargaining is important, there is no one single contributor or solution that will directly overcome the deep-rooted and multi-faceted health human resource challenges facing Ontario’s health care system,” he wrote in a statement.
Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office in a recent report estimated that similar arbitration rulings in the wake of Bill 124 being found unconstitutional have already cost the province nearly $1 billion in extra health-sector spending.