SAHO, CUPE, SGEU & SEIU-West Common Table Bargaining Update, February 1, 2026

SAHO met with CUPE, SEIU-West and SGEU, December 15-19 for the last bargaining session of 2025, and held the first session of 2026 from January 19-23. These sessions were not overly productive due, in part, to the unions backing away from their commitment to discuss a variety of issues at the common table.

SAHO remains disappointed at the slow pace of these discussions. Since early 2025, SAHO has been trying to get the parties to a common table by offering a 3% interim wage increase, retroactive to April 1, 2023, as an incentive. The unions rejected that offer, denying employees the interim economic relief that would have come with this wage increase while also prolonging the negotiating process.   

Prior to the January 19-23, 2026, session, SAHO restructured its proposal packages by integrating individual language and common table proposals for each union. While some discussion took place at individual tables at the January session, the unions deferred their response on common issues until the session scheduled for mid-February.  

Negotiations have been slowed by a number of challenges:

• Union proposals that only retain seniority for employees who terminate employment and reject portability of seniority for employees seeking opportunities outside of their own union’s jurisdiction. Portability without the inclusion of seniority means existing barriers to recruitment and retention will remain, and employees seeking positions outside of their own union’s jurisdiction will continue to be disadvantaged.
• Misrepresentation by the unions of SAHO’s proposals related to movement of employees. The unions are portraying these proposals as the employers wanting the ability to involuntarily move any employee wherever they desire. This is not only incorrect, but inflammatory. The proposals do not include a plan for arbitrary movement of employees. Rather, SAHO’s proposals ensure that employees in the 300 plus common classifications maintain internal equity and benefit equally in the opportunities that come with a provincial health employer, without interfering with union jurisdiction or membership. These benefits would apply to the SHA as well as Affiliate employers.

Restricting union members from crossing former geographic regions is a critical obstacle to finding solutions for temporary or emergent workload issues in situations where employees have capacity and want to pick up additional hours in a neighbouring community but cannot do so, because it is in a different union jurisdiction.   

The following map provides context for SAHO’s proposals, highlighting the current barriers faced by employees seeking opportunities in a different union jurisdiction:

                     SEIU-West jurisdiction in yellow and CUPE jurisdiction in blue

• As an example, the Rolling Hills Lodge in Rockglen is short-staffed due to illness but can’t call in LPNs from Coronach, who have availability and want additional hours, because each location is in a different union jurisdiction. Instead, the facility works short-staffed, and patient care suffers. 
• Because work locations are in different union jurisdictions, a part-time CUPE member working in Bengough cannot apply to a full-time vacancy in nearby Assiniboia unless they give up their CUPE seniority and re-start to accumulate seniority in SEIU-West. The same inherent unfairness would apply to an SEIU-West employee seeking an opportunity in Bengough.

There are many more cases where jurisdictional constraints based on former geographical areas create barriers which severely limit the ability to serve patients effectively and efficiently, especially in rural areas. This is an issue of fairness for the employees covered by these three collective agreements and a barrier that is often raised by employees to their employer(s). 

SAHO’s proposals are designed to address these barriers while maintaining fair treatment for employees.   In many instances, the flexibility built into SAHO’s proposals benefits both the employers and the employee, by reducing the distance employees would have to travel and dealing with short-staffing situations. This employee movement would not be considered contracting in or out.

To date, the unions have refused to meaningfully engage with proposals which recognize that, with the creation of a provincial health authority, the former health regions no longer exist.    

The unions have asked that the next bargaining session – scheduled for February 5 and 6 - focus exclusively on individual table issues. SAHO is supporting this request to conclude individual discussions as quickly as possible and move onto more substantive common tables discussions. SAHO remains committed to achieving a negotiated settlement.  

Union/CUPE,Union/SEIU-West,Union/SGEU February 06, 2026