After two years of bargaining between the Saskatchewan Government and General Employees Union and the province, a new contract has been voted on and has passed.
The deal had been introduced back in the spring after an impasse was declared in February between the two sides.
"I am pleased with both parties' commitment and co-operation in working at the bargaining table to reach a new collective agreement that is good for both public service employees and the people of Saskatchewan," said Minister Responsible for the Public Service Commission Dustin Duncan.
Chair of the negotiating committee for the Public Service/Government Employment (PS/GE) Lori Bossaer talks about the deal and what members saw in it that made them want to accept it.
"We did get some good enhancements, one of them being members now have the right to union representation any meeting where discipline could be imposed, or just it could lead to discipline. That is a very big game-changer for us. We also have some enhancements in our meal allowance, weekends, shift differentials, and food allowances. Staying in private residence on government business, that sort of stuff."
One of the bigger items is the wage increase, which Bossaer says will be retroactive over the past couple of years.
"So, this is retroactive to 2022. So, October there'll be three per cent retro from October 2022, October 2023, there will be another three per cent and then in October of 2024, we will have a 1.67 per cent wage increase. Out of that, we were at two per cent, but we took 0.4 to bring everybody's attention up to a nine per cent match. So that leaves the wage increase at 1.67 per cent."
Bossaer says that she's overall pleased with this round of negotiations and says that most workers got a good deal.
"I think we got some good gains this round. There was also a class plan review that was brought to mediation and what that means is by distributing all points to all of our members in the class plan, 2/3 of our members have the ability to go up a level, which means their pay band went up. Unfortunately, the 1/3 that didn't reach enough points to go to the next pay band in the level system will remain the economically same."
That's echoed by the membership, which had a very high voting turnout.
"The contract path was voted in favour of. Out of all of our members that have the ability to vote, we did voting online this year we had about approximately 85 per cent of our members that gave us their contact information, so they were able to get the link to vote and out of the ones that voted that had the ability to vote, we had a 60. 4 per cent turnout, which is huge."
Bossaer says that now they're looking at what contract will come next for the provincial workers represented by the union.
"Moving forward, strategically, we'll start looking at what the next round is going to bring, which will be our contract ends next year in September. So strategically, we'll look at what that means. We will be going around the province to see what our members want for proposals to go forward for the next round of bargaining. We'll be working on that right away, preparing for the next round."
Bossaer thanked the membership for committing to a united front and sticking by the union throughout the negotiation process.