Work on Weekend programs in Canada?

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Dec 27, 2008

Alberta Health Services introduced a weekend worker retention plan into the contract in 2007. The deal is that the weekend worker would work a 0.8 FTE (32 hours a week) and be paid for full time hours; the person applying had to be in a full time position already when they applied. The employer brought the plan to the table, then when the contract was ratified they decided it wasn't a good idea after all... after they realized that they'd effectively lose one full time equivalent for every five people who chose to be weekend workers. It took 15 months to get some sort of action on putting it into practice, and they've severely limited the number of people they're allowing to be weekend workers. We have more than 140 nurses in positions on our unit and out of all of those, we have TWO weekend workers- one who works days and one who works nights. They are also two of the most senior people on our roster. So I guess that answers most of your questions as they apply to Alberta. I think BC has a weekend worker provision in their contract.

Pepperlady · Dec 27, 2008

I work in BC and have never heard of such a weekend progrm. We get paid more for the shift hours that fall on the weekend, but no specific weekend program that I have ever heard of.

I would suspect that because virtually all the hospitals in Canada work under union contracts that these programs don't exist here.