Advocating for better maternity, family and parental leave provisions for members
In 2021, HSAA membership voted to support a resolution submitted at Convention that stated HSAA will advocate for improved maternity, family and parental leave provisions for HSAA members. The reason for this resolution was because, in general, our collective agreements have failed to keep up with other employment contract provisions that support parents and families provided by comparable public sector collective agreements.
Some examples of other maternity and parental leave contract provisions in Alberta public sector employees and other provincial health-care collective agreements include: wage top-up pay, co-sharing of benefits throughout leave, family care days, continued step increases throughout leave and vacation accrual during leave. Note: A wage ‘top-up’ means their EI payment is ‘topped-up’ by the employer to that per cent of their wage.
There are countless examples of collective agreements that represent similar health-care disciplines and first responders that have a higher standard for maternity and parental leave provisions. A couple of those examples include:
- A collective agreement in BC, which covers many similar mental health professionals that are represented by HSAA is the collective agreement of the Government of the Province of British Columbia represented by the BC Public Service Agency and the Professional Employees Association. In that agreement, they receive 85% top-up for 15 weeks post birth, then followed by 75% top-up for the following 35 weeks of parental leave (for a total of 50 weeks of top-up pay).
- An Alberta collective agreement example is the Calgary Police Collective Agreement. Under this agreement, women receive 78 weeks of maternity leave with 17 weeks topped-up to 95% of pay; the city continues to pay their portion of benefits throughout. Men receive 62 weeks of parental leave; the city also continues to pay their portion of the benefits throughout. Importantly, service and seniority continue to accrue with no decrease in status – meaning they receive their step increases and don’t fall behind compared to colleagues. They also accrue vacation while on leave.
These examples represent important and diverse ways in which we, as members and our union, can advocate and bargain for improved maternity, family and parental leave provisions to come in line with other provincial health-care and first responder unions.
HSAA’s bargaining committee negotiating with Alberta Health Services (AHS) has taken these issues to the forefront of bargaining and made recommendations to our employer, in order to help bring our collective agreement in line with these other public sector employers and collective agreements. Unfortunately, these types of provisions are monetary items, and at the bargaining table, they are often left for a mediator to consider. Ultimately, they tend not to end up getting changed in our new agreements, sometimes in lieu of other items, and sometimes because wage increases end up being the main focus of the mediator.
It is unfortunate that despite several attempts by our AHS bargaining committee to improve these contract provisions, we have continued to fall far short for maternity, family and parental leave provisions and have made little to no gains in this area. This is a particularly important issue, given our membership is majority female (approximately 80%) and also includes parents who need accommodations for family priorities.
HSAA’s Women’s Committee has discussed what else can be done to help change or improve these provisions in our contracts. One option is to lobby for the importance of these changes with our MLAs, our employer(s) and our Minister of Health. We are currently in a potential time for change for our provincial government and those that represent us. We can take this opportunity to speak with and write to our MLAs and candidates who are running in our electoral districts about these issues and why they should be important considerations for
health-care workers.
Our current government has some recognition for, and expressed multiple times in the media, that they need to recruit and retain health-care workers and paramedics. Our current collective agreement includes money set aside for “recruitment and retention.” Hopefully, we can highlight these maternity and parental leave provisions as issues that are important for the recruitment and retention of health-care professionals in Alberta.
So, please contact your local officials, talk with your colleagues, write your employer and look out for a draft letter from the Women’s Committee that can be sent to elected officials asking for change on these issues. Below, there are some ideas of what we can ask from our employers:
Continuing to accumulate step increases while on maternity leave
Many agreements have this provision in order to not have women’s earnings fall behind their male counterparts as they take leave. Some agreements also include continuing to accumulate vacation throughout this leave.
- Increase the number of personal leave days, or days to care for family members. Allow for current medical appointment time to include taking children or dependents to medical appointments. Allow employees to take sick days when their children are sick (to care for them).
Have the employer continue to pay their portion of medical and disability benefits, ideally through the leave.
This is a vital protection necessary for women about to go on maternity leave. For example, the cost estimates HSAA members receive to maintain these benefits are close to $6,000-7,000 from AHS, per year of leave (and even higher for 18 months). Many members take a chance and cancel their benefits for a year, which can have grave consequences for disability needs.
Receive pay top-up during maternity and parental leave, beyond the “sick portion” (which, for example, is currently only 6-8 weeks after a birth in the AHS agreement).
After having a baby, parents only receive EI which is around $2,000 per month. Currently, a good portion of this is taken if you still want medical and disability benefits. This is very difficult to live on in Alberta and can put mothers at an increased vulnerability during a time period of life when domestic violence increases.
And finally, please contact the Women’s Committee if you have any ideas on how we can better affect change in these areas! Please reach out to Committee Chair, Megan Connolly, at Megan.Connolly@hsaa.ca.