Manitoba Nurses

Hi Kristen. I worked in Manitoba from 1995 to 2002, when I moved to Alberta. When I first started working as a nurse, Manitoba was in the middle of the cut-back era and I was lucky to get a job. (I applied for 168 hospital positions before getting an interview.) There were wage and benefit roll-backs that lasted a long time. By the late 90's things had started to improve and now the nurses of Manitoba are near the middle of the pack in wages, which is where they want to be. One of the nice things in Manitoba is that there is a single contract that all nurses are covered by; all nurses have the same rights, responsibilities and benefits, equality across the province. (Here in Alberta, the local conditions take up more paper than the basic contract, which is insane! It's kinda like Animal Farm here.)

The number of hours per year a full time nurse is required to work in Manitoba is 2015. A first-year nurse in Manitoba will make $26.80 an hour. There are six rungs on the wage ladder with the top paid nurse making $31.59 an hour. Nurses with a Baccalaureate degree will also receive and education bonus of $.60 an hour. In addition there are shift differentials: $1.75 an hour for night shift, $1.00 for evenings and $1.35 for weekends. Charge pay adds another $.70 an hour to the total. Increments accrue after 1343 hours worked, or one year, whichever is later (so annually at least). Manitoba will also provide isolation allowances and transportation subsidies to nurses working in remote areas (and there are a LOT of those in Manitoba!). Each nurse is entitled to a $200 continuing education allotment annually to help pay for attendance at workshops and conferences.

Working conditions are really not all that different from anywhere else in Canada. The government and the Manitoba Nurses' Union have a commitment to bringing the full time to part time employed ratio closer to the national average, as Manitoba had a big problem with a scarcity of full time nurses (and positions) and an over-abundance of part time and casual nurses. Rural hospitals have less staff turnover than urban centres, but also have the most difficulty recruiting new staff. Their nurses are very much generalists, looking after whomever is in need, for whatever reason. In the urban areas of Winnipeg and Brandon, there is more opportunity to specialize. Workload can sometimes be an issue and Manitoba has a very comprehensive method for dealing with it.

Manitoba offers an attractive extended health, dental and vision care package. They've blended their sick-leave and family leave into a single pool of hours that may be accessed by the nurse when the need arises. Up to 25 % of the hours in one's bank can be taken to cope with family issues, as opposed to personal illness. There have been some problems with the long-term disability plan in the past (delay and foot-dragging before a nurse is considered eligible, with the attendant financial losses...). The rules for the assignment of vacations are explicit and not open for interpretation, which can only help to make them more fair.

There are a lot of good things about nursing in Manitoba that I wish I could import to Alberta. I'm working on it...