FAQ: Bargaining 2025

While the contracts covering most HSA members will expire on March 31, 2025, the terms of these agreements remain in force until new contracts are negotiated and voted on by all union members. That means your pay and benefits will remain unchanged during negotiations.

HSA members are covered by four major agreements -- the Health Science Professionals Bargaining Association (HSPBA) collective agreement, the Community Bargaining Association (CBA) collective agreement, the Community Social Services Bargaining Association (CSSBA) collective agreement, and the Nurses Bargaining Association (NBA) collective agreement.

Each agreement is being negotiated by a bargaining committee comprised of professional negotiators employed by the union, subject experts on specialized labour relations matters, and HSA members elected by their peers to ensure member concerns are addressed at the bargaining table and in the new agreement. You can find the names of your elected negotiating committee members on the bargaining page for your collective agreement.

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During the negotiations themselves, members will be kept up to date with regular bulletins. Those bulletins, however, will need to steer clear of information that could tip off the employer, so we will only be able to communicate general developments.

The deadline for submitting bargaining proposals has passed. The deadlines were:

HSPBA: October 11, 2024
CSS/NBA/CBA: October 4, 2024

Here's a description of the process that was followed:

Local HSA chapter across the province held bargaining proposals meetings in fall 2024 as part of your union's preparation for bargaining.

Members at these meetings discussed all proposals submitted by members of the chapter. After this discussion, members at the meeting voted on the proposals, and proposals that were supported were forwarded for more discussion at the Bargaining Proposal Conference.

Individual proposals are not accepted. All proposals must be voted on and supported by members at local HSA chapter meetings before being forwarded to the union office for discussion at the Bargaining Proposal Conference.

In addition to the chapter meetings for bargaining proposals, HSA conducts member surveys to inform delegates to the Bargaining Proposals Conferences about members’ priorities for bargaining. The surveys are conducted annually, with the most recent fielded in May 2024.

Members who wished to attend the HSPBA Bargaining Proposal Conference submitted brief written statements. Members attending regional meetings received all candidates’ statements and voted for the candidates they wished to send to the Bargaining Proposal Conference. The number of delegates to the Bargaining Proposal Conference varies based on the number of members in the region.

HSPBA Bargaining Proposal Conference Delegates attended the Bargaining Proposal Conference in November 2024, where they reviewed and discussed all HSPBA Bargaining Proposals received from chapters across the province. They also set the priorities for bargaining and voted to elect the members of the Bargaining Committee as part of the business of the Bargaining Proposal Conference.

In addition to the HSPBA Bargaining Proposal Conference, HSA held a Bargaining Proposal Conference for members covered by the Community Social Services, Community Health, and Nurses collective agreements. Negotiations for those contracts are not led by HSA, but by the union with the most members covered by the collective agreement. However, HSA has representation on the bargaining committee to ensure that HSA members’ interests are well represented in contract negotiations.

A joint Bargaining Proposal Conference for members covered by these collective agreements was held October 28-30, 2024. Delegates to this Bargaining Proposal Conference elected member representatives to serve on their respective Bargaining Committees.

By necessity, the details of negotiations must be treated as confidential. That’s because contract negotiation is set up as an adversarial process, with the employer on one side, and the union, representing the members, on the other side. The union is given no information about the priorities and conditions the employer will bring to the table. And if the employer were to have advance knowledge of what proposals we plan to bring to the table, and which of these are more important than others, they would have a significant tactical advantage.

The members who developed these proposals at chapter meetings also elected representatives who gathered at the bargaining proposal conferences earlier this month to discuss and debate the exact order of priorities. Those members have been instructed to keep these decisions confidential for the reasons above, but if you’d like to know more about the general direction of the decisions coming out of these deliberations, you can always talk to your steward or the local delegate to the bargaining proposal conference.

During the negotiations themselves, members will be kept up to date with regular bulletins. Those bulletins, however, will need to steer clear of information that could tip off the employer, so we will only be able to communicate general developments.

The Joint Health Science Benefits Trust (JHSBT) was established April 1, 2017 to provide employee benefits to members of the Health Science Professionals Bargaining Association (HSPBA) and their dependents. The Trust receives negotiated funding from employers and some contributions from employees, which it holds in the Trust fund for the purpose of providing group health and insurance benefits to eligible employees, their eligible dependents and beneficiaries. This change removed the provision and structure of health and welfare benefits from the HSPBA collective agreement.

The only area of negotiation through HSPBA collective agreement bargaining is related the level of funding to cover the health and welfare benefits provided by the Trust. (i.e. does more funding need to be negotiated to cover the cost of providing health and welfare benefits)

Any proposals related to health and welfare benefits submitted to the November Bargaining Proposal Conference were not considered to take forward to HSPBA contract negotiations, but were instead forwarded to the JHSBT Trustees for consideration. HSPBA has representatives on the joint Trust whose responsibility it is to represent the interests of members.

A similar trust, the Joint Community Benefits Trust, covers HSA members covered by the CBA.

Members covered by the NBA and CSS collective agreements negotiate their helath and welfare benefits as part of the negotiating process.