CUPE 5430 has released new research showing that most health care workers in Saskatchewan are the lowest paid in all of Canada. After four years without a wage increase, CUPE 5430 is calling for desperately needed wage increases to retain health care workers in Saskatchewan’s critically short-staffed health system.
Compared to the average of all other provinces in the country, Saskatchewan health care workers are paid the worst:
Continuing Care Assistants (CCAs) are paid $3.37 less than the average of all other provinces,
- Food Service Workers are paid $3.73 less,
- Environmental Service Workers are paid $4.33 less, and
- Laundry Service Workers are paid $4.36 less.
Starting wages in Alberta are higher than the maximum wage rate in Saskatchewan for all the classifications above.
While other provinces have recognized that competitive wages are essential to recruiting and retaining health care workers, the Sask. Party government has allowed frontline workers to fall farther and farther behind.
Saskatchewan health care workers have now gone more than four years without a wage increase. The consequences are being felt by Saskatchewan patients and families. When experienced health care workers leave for better-paying jobs, vacancies remain open, workloads increase for those who stay, and the pressure on an already strained health care system gets worse.
Meanwhile, the cost of groceries, fuel, housing, and virtually every other household expense has continued to climb. Workers have been expected to absorb those costs while continuing to work through chronic understaffing, growing workloads, and worsening conditions for less pay than their counterparts elsewhere in the country.
“The Sask. Party government has had four years to show health care workers that it values them. Instead, Saskatchewan workers are being paid less than their counterparts across the country and continue to be denied a meaningful wage increase.” said Bashir Jalloh, President of CUPE 5430.
“The government cannot claim to be serious about fixing health care while simultaneously allowing Saskatchewan workers to sit at the bottom of the national wage scale.
This government cannot keep pretending that recruitment and retention will fix themselves. If you pay workers less than other provinces, you make it harder to keep them here. That is basic common sense. Fixing the health care crisis starts with respecting health care workers and paying them what they are worth.”
CUPE 5430 members are now preparing to hold a strike vote in September. After years of being asked to wait, work short-staffed, and accept less, frontline health care workers are making it clear that they have had enough.