CUPE NL wants answers as to why workers within the health care system are being treated differently in light of recent incentives offered to certain health professionals.

In recent years, the provincial government has introduced a series of incentives to attract and hold onto various health care professionals, including nurses, doctors and specialists. However, those incentives did not extend to all people working in the province’s hospitals and medical facilities.

NDP Leader Jim Dinn presented a petition in the House of Assembly Thursday signed by nearly 1,400 CUPE service and support workers in the health care system who are demanding action on recruitment and retention.

Rowena Bourgeois, an accounting clerk working at the Bay St. George Long-Term Care Centre, says the petition went to every MHA in the province, including the premier, adding they even met with Minister John Hogan, yet she says their concerns were dismissed.

Bourgeois wants to know why the concerns of doctors and nurses are a priority, but theirs are “merely a bargaining issue?”

CUPE NL President Sherry Hillier says if the provincial government is going to offer health workers wage increases outside of the collective bargaining process, they must treat all workers in the system equally.

Back in the House, Labrador West NDP MHA Jordan Brown said the health care workers are being treated unfairly.

“Some of these workers don’t even make a living wage,” he said, asking when government will “treat every health care worker with the respect they deserve.”

Finance Minister Siobhan Coady responded.

“I can advise the House that we have reached agreement with 30 of the 30 collective agreements in the province,” said Coady, who adds that they are always open to having discussions with unions “on an ongoing basis.”