KINGSTON, ON – Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) staff are among more than 25,000 Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) hospital sector members now voting to ratify a new provincial contract. CUPE 1974, representing over 1,400 staff at KHSC, will hold a media conference on Monday (May 14 at 10:30 a.m.) at the Stuart Street entrance to Kingston General Hospital (KGH) to release the results of their local vote.
CUPE represented KHSC staff began voting on the new deal yesterday. Voting continues until Sunday at 3:00 p.m.
KHSC nurses, care aides, dietary, stores, porters, environmental cleaning and clerical and trades staff at the hospital’s KGH site, are eligible to vote for the new contract that includes wage increases in each of the four years, no concessions and breakthrough language on workplace violence.
The new contract also maintains CUPE’s superior job security provisions and chain bumping language in addition to improvements to violence protection, pregnancy leave, disability rights and the workload complaints processes.
CUPE 1974, through its affiliation to CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU/CUPE) that bargains provincially for Ontario hospital staff represented by CUPE, in March, joined a rare bargaining common front with the members of two other hospital unions, SEIU and Unifor. That alliance resulted in a tentative contract at the end of April for nearly 75,000 hospital workers.
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For more information, please contact:
Stella Yeadon, CUPE Communications, 416-559-9300, [email protected]
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