The member unions of the Community Bargaining Association (CBA) have voted by 94 per cent to ratify a new three-year collective agreement with the Health Employers Association of British Columbia (HEABC).
 
Pay increases are retroactive to April 1, 2022, and the remainder of the collective agreement comes into effect immediately. The agreement will be effective until March 31, 2025. The employer controls when retroactive pay will be paid, but the union will advocate for it to be issued as quickly as possible.
 

Health Sciences Association, the union representing over 20,000 specialized health and community social service professionals in communities across BC, today welcomed new investments to rebuild a health care workforce depleted by three years of pandemic workload.

Voting on your tentative agreement opens on Saturday morning (more on that below), and all CBA members are invited to join information meetings scheduled for tonight and tomorrow:

• Thursday February 16
  7:00 to 8:00 pm PST
• Friday February 17
  noon to 1:00 pm PST

The tentative agreement reached by your representatives on the bargaining committee is an historic, greatly-expanded collective agreement that meets the priorities set by members like you working in community health across the province. Your negotiating team applied relentless pressure on the employers – backed by your courageous support – forcing the government to put new money on the table that brought wages and premiums closer than ever to those of our colleagues in the Facilities Agreement, while protecting extended health and long-term disability benefits.

Did you get a call or text from HSA? We're contacting members to make sure we have your current personal email address to ensure that you recieve important bargaining updates.

You can update your contact information using our member contact update form.

When your Community Health Services and Support bargaining committee went into bargaining, they had dozens of priorities from members like you. You gave your representatives clear direction that closing the wage gap between the Community Agreement and the Facilities Agreement was essential. By autumn, progress had been made on many items, but the government had dug in their heels on two key issues: bringing wages in line with other sectors and securing your benefits.
 

We are pleased to announce that the team negotiating on behalf of you and your colleagues represented by the Community Bargaining Association have reached a tentative agreement in the early hours of Sunday, January 15, 2023. 

Following the CBA Bargaining Committee’s decision to suspend negotiations over lack of progress in early November, the employers have recently asked for a return to the bargaining table in January to discuss an amended offer.

The eight constituent unions, led by BCGEU and including HSA, have agreed to meet with HEABC to hear about the new offer. Those meetings will begin January 10, 2023. At this point, we do not have any details, and there is no guarantee that an amended offer will allow us to reach a tentative agreement, but that is the goal of the Committee

As reported last week, contract talks have broken off as of November 3. The current monetary offer by the Health Employers Association of BC is not sufficient to meet the core priorities established by the CBA bargaining committee.

• You can learn more here.

It’s now important to hear from you so that your HSA representatives in discussions with the lead union can effectively advocate for your concerns. Here’s what happens next:
 

A delegation from the constituent unions of the CBA met with HEABC and a representative of the Public Sector Employers’ Council Secretariat (PSEC) on November 3, 2022.
 
It was our goal to impress upon PSEC that the CBA was unable to meet the core priorities we had established based on the monetary offer we have received. In particular we outlined the dramatic differences in compensation between CBA and FBA workers and the impact it has had, and will continue to have, on recruitment and retention in the CBA.