Health care workers win more stand-by pay

Emergency Health care workers in Saskatchewan won their case after raising concerns over assignments which kept them on stand-by far from their home base.

The Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan filed a grievance on behalf of employees at Sunrise Health Region, challenging the employer’s practice of assigning stand-by shifts at locations other than that of the employee’s designated base.

Sunrise Health (which provides emergency medical and ambulance services for various towns in Saskatchewan) had a longstanding practice of assigning overtime shifts for employees, however, of concern was that stand-by pay was significantly lower than the regular rate of pay.

According to the union, the stand-by provisions in the collective agreement were created so employees could be with their families and maintain some semblance of their normal lives — that is sleep, shop, cook and the like without significant disruption, all the while being able to respond to the employer’s request in a timely fashion.

Therefore, the union argued that being on stand-by away from their home base differed vastly from being on stand-by at home.

The issue is not the nature of the work but rather the applicable rate of pay.

For casual employees, the stand-by rate was $5 per hour, compared to regular pay which approaches $30 per hour.

For full-time workers, stand-by shifts are offered, not assigned, and the rate of pay is $2.19 per hour.

On the other hand, Sunrise Health said its practice of assigning shifts for various locations had been in place since 2006.

Further, the company said it needed to have round-the-clock emergency services in certain locations, and the need to reassign assignments was the result of unplanned staff shortages.

While stand-by pay was outlined in the collective agreement, the union said the work that was being assigned was not, by definition, stand-by pay, but rather regular work.

Because of the language in the collective agreement, arbitrator William Hood said the question was whether stand-by pay was applicable when an employee was designated to report from work and stay in another location, or whether it applied only to cases where an employee must be available without undue delay to report for duty.

Hood went on to say that the stand-by rate was, compared to the regular rate of pay, miniscule.

Moreover, there was only one stand-by rate, regardless of where the employee was required to be on stand-by.

"Simply put, it is my view that, given the stand-by payment in the collective agreement is so disproportionally low compared to the regular pay rate, it was intended as the pay rate for stand-by while at the home base only, and was never intended as a rate of pay when the employee was deprived of the majority of those benefits he or she expected to receive in return for the remaining on stand-by at low stand-by payment rates," Hood explained in his decision.