'We sacrificed a lot over the pandemic:' Former nurses at Markham-Stouffville Hospital call for retro pay

Former non-unionized employees at another GTA hospital are speaking out after they say they have been denied retro payments for time worked during the pandemic.

In recent months, retro payments have gone out to staff at hospitals across the province after it was ruled that Bill 124, which capped wage increases for many public sector employees at one per cent per year over a three-year period, was unconstitutional.

Arbitrated settlements have been reached with various unions representing hospital workers, which has resulted in current and former employees seeing thousands of dollars in back pay for time worked for the years that the bill was in effect.

Compensation for non-union employees is now at the discretion of individual hospitals, many of which have decided only to pay current, active non-union employees retro pay while refusing to pay former non-union staff any extra compensation for time worked in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

Only a handful of hospitals in the province have registered nurses (RNs) who are not unionized, including SickKids Hospital, which initially opted to exclude former staff from retro payments but reversed that decision last week.

The about-face came after former nurses at SickKids spoke out against the hospital, calling the decision to deny them retro payments “insulting.”

RNs at hospitals represented by the Ontario Nurses Association (ONA), the union representing 68,000 nurses and health-care workers across the province, are eligible for retro payments for time worked during that three-year period regardless of their employment status.

Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga and Oak Valley Health's Markham Stouffville Hospital are two other hospitals where RNs are not unionized.

A spokesperson for Trillium Health Partners, which operates Credit Valley Hospital, told CP24.com that both current and former non-union RNs at the hospital are eligible for retro cheques and former employees were “contacted with instructions on how to claim their payments.”

Former nurses at Markham-Stouffville Hospital, however, have not yet been included in the payout.

Katherine Gilbert, a registered nurse who worked at Markham Stouffville Hospital from 2018 to 2022, said she was told back in July that the hospital would not be providing retro payments to former non-union staff.

“It is not even so much about the money. The money counts but it is that we worked really hard over the pandemic and we sacrificed a lot over the pandemic. Many of my colleagues have left the profession altogether because of what they have gone through,” she said.

“There is still an emotional and physical toll on what we’ve gone through and it is just surprising that the employers for whatever reason have decided that because we’ve decided to move on or because we’ve taken other opportunities… that they have (denied) us money that we have already earned.”

While Gilbert said Oak Valley made it clear to her that former nurses would not be receiving the payment, in an email to CP24.com, a spokesperson for the hospital said they have not made a decision when it comes to former employees.

“Oak Valley Health will be providing retroactive payments and base rate adjustments that will replicate the (percentage) increases in the ONA re-opener arbitration award for our current, active nurses,” the statement read.

“With respect to retired or former employees, the hospital has not yet taken a decision and is awaiting further information and guidance on this matter including funding support from government.”

Emergency-room nurse Eram Chhogala poses for a photograph at a park near her home, in Toronto, Thursday, March 17, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tijana MartinAndrea Di Costanzo, a former registered nurse at Markham Stouffville Hospital who left in February after 11 years, said she too was told she would not be receiving the retro payment in an email she received back in July.

“It was insulting. It obviously frustrated me and it angered me and I know it angered a lot of my former coworkers who worked their butts off throughout the pandemic,” she told CP24.com.

“I put my life on the line. I put my family’s life on the line.”

Di Costanzo said she believes decisions like this hurt a hospital’s ability to recruit and retain staff.

“For a profession that has already been hit hard and is already struggling and reeling from the aftermath of the pandemic, to be doing this to nurses is really not what you want to be doing,” she said.

“If the government and the hospitals want to look at why we are not able to recruit and retain nurses, here is a classic example.”

At many GTA hospitals, including North York General Hospital, Michael Garron Hospital, and Women’s College Hospital, it has been communicated to staff that former, non-union employees will be excluded from retro payments. RNs at these hospitals are unionized and therefore are eligible for retro payments even if they no longer work there but some other hospital workers at these sites are not represented by unions. This means those employees will not receive extra compensation for the time they worked during the pandemic if they are not currently employed at the hospitals.

All three hospitals told CP24.com that current, active staff, including non-union employees, will receive retro payments but the only former employees that will be paid are unionized staff who will receive retro payments in accordance with their collective agreements.

Other hospitals, including University Health Network, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and Unity Health, said they are still working out the details.

“UHN strongly supports efforts to address the impact of Bill 124 for all employees. We've been working closely with government and other hospitals in our region to ensure equitable and fair decisions on retroactive compensation adjustments for all employees - both union and non-union - who were impacted by the three-year Bill 124 moderation period,” the statement from UHN read.

“We are currently in the process of finalizing this work. We continue to keep UHN staff regularly updated on our progress.”

According to Unity Health Toronto, the hospital network is working with government funders and partner hospitals to “ensure that compensation decisions on retroactive compensation adjustments for all employees impacted by the three-year Bill 124 moderation period are fair and transparent.”

“That work is being finalized and we have shared with staff that we will be communicating decisions back with them as soon as we can,” the statement to CP24.com read.

A spokesperson for Sunnybrook told CP24.com it is also working with government partners to ensure it makes “informed decisions regarding the reversal of Bill 124.”

“Sunnybrook has committed to extending retroactive payments to our non-union staff, similar to our union groups. As discussions are still ongoing with some of our union groups, we have not yet finalized our approach regarding retroactive payments to our non-union staff,” the statement read.

The Ministry of Health has not replied to CP24.com’s inquiries on retro payments for hospital workers and how funding is being allocated.

“The province holds the purse strings for the hospitals and if they don’t increase hospital funding commensurate with the cost of this award, then it is going to put hospitals in a position of having to fund this award,” Stephanie Ross, an associate professor of Labour Studies at McMaster University, told CP24.com on Monday.

She said it is not surprising that hospitals are trying to save money by excluding former non-unionized staff.

Ross said she also understands why they have opted to pay current, non-unionized staff members retro pay even though they are not covered by collective agreements.

“If you have current employees that aren’t covered by the arbitration, they (employers) have to concern themselves with retention of those employees and then have concern themselves with a sense of fairness among existing workers. If you have some workers getting catch-up wage increases and other not, that can cause an enormous amount of internal dissention and it’s very bad for morale,” she said.

“It’s less of an issue for workers who aren’t working there anymore… even though I would say they very justly deserve that retroactive pay because that money was owed to them and this arbitration does provide a clear explanation that those wage increases were unjustly withheld.”

She said it has been established that Bill 124 was an “inappropriate repression of workers’ wages in the public sector.”

“But the incentive that the employers have to pay that retroactive pay to people who are no longer working for them is not there,” she said.

“I venture to say that if the employer is able to get away with it, they will. And that is going to leave the harm of Bill 124 in tact for those workers. The fact that they don’t work there anymore doesn’t mean that they weren’t harmed (by Bill 124) and that doesn’t mean that they don’t have to have that harm remedied.”

She said the approach to pay current but not former non-unionized employees retro pay is “short-sighted” when it comes to retention.

“This approach is terrible for retention overall. Even though it may seem like a small number of people, we are at the knife’s edge in terms of staffing,” she said.

“We do not have the luxury of pushing more people out of the sector.”