Welcome Back to The Pulse
The 3.5% general wage increase we identified as the emerging norm in our last issue has not just held — it has hardened, and it has spread.
Across 36 long-term care and retirement home awards this quarter, not one board departed from 3.5%. Employers argued that falling inflation, rising unemployment and a deteriorating outlook justified a break from the pattern; boards consistently answered that the data did not show the sector actually breaking. What did move is more granular — the 1% mid-term increase that continues to separate long-term care from retirement homes, RPN and classification-specific catch-up, and a growing run of Permanent Wage Enhancement implementation disputes.
The pattern has now reached sectors governed by entirely different statutes. Grey County’s paramedics were awarded 3.5% in each of 2024 and 2025 under the Ambulance Services Collective Bargaining Act — the same number, arrived at through a separate framework and a different comparator group. In Saskatchewan, an interest arbitration board awarded medical residents 10.5% over three years, which works out to the same 3.5% a year. That convergence is worth watching. When a rate travels across statutory lines, across provinces, and across employee groups as different as personal support workers, paramedics and physicians in training, it stops being a sectoral pattern and starts being a healthcare pattern.
The remaining decisions in this issue are where the real operational risk sits. Arbitrator George Surdykowski has returned to the question of how much medical information a hospital may require in support of a sick leave claim, in three final awards involving Windsor Regional Hospital — and the answer is more confined than many employers assume. An employer asks a cardiologist one question too many, and finds out where the line is. A claims administrator measures an employee’s adjustment disorder against generic norms instead of assessing her individually, and the hospital pays $7,000 in mental distress damages. An essential services agreement quietly voids itself because the workforce outgrew its own schedule. A single absent word — “rate” — decides whether working strikers earn overtime. A long-service employee resigns, nobody asks why, and the damages come to $1 million. A pharmacy technician sends a patient’s health information over Snapchat. A grievance surfaces nearly seven years after the breach and is allowed to proceed anyway.
Read together, the through-line is precision — in what you draft, what you ask, and what you document. If you have questions about any of the matters covered, please reach out to a member of our team.
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98
DECISIONS
SUMMARIZED
6
JUDRISDICTIONS
COVERED
3.5%
THE NUMBER
THAT KEEPS HOLDING
8
REPORTS
IN THIS ISSUE
ONTARIO • GRIEVANCE ARBITRATION • MARCH – JUNE 2026
The Docket: Where the Fights Actually Happen
24
Decisions across hospitals, EMS, long-term care and retirement homes — the day-to-day disputes that never make the wage tables.
MEDICAL INFORMATION
5 decisions
Trillium Health Partners — requiring a diagnosis at first instance was an error, but the porter’s HOODIP claim still failed for want of evidence of total disability or continuous care.
Health Sciences North — $7,000 in mental distress damages after a claims administrator measured an employee’s adjustment disorder against generic norms rather than assessing her individually.
SCHEDULING & PREMIUMS
6 decisions
EllisDon (OTMH) — an electrician who accepted an unscheduled shift between regular shifts was “called back to work.” Call-back pay is not limited to emergencies or compelled returns.
Orillia Soldiers Memorial and West Haldimand — nurses who voluntarily pick up shifts after the schedule is posted don’t convert them into premium entitlements, and premium pay for a rest-period breach covers only the hours actually in breach.
Trillium Health Partners — cut-off times for next-day shift exchanges upheld as a reasonable way to administer a 1,600-employee unit, distinguishing earlier awards that struck down blanket limits.
Unity Health Toronto — RPNs must be paid for end-of-shift Transfer of Accountability time. The employer ultimately did not contest the interpretation.
POSTINGS & CLASSIFICATION
4 decisions
University Health Network — “need not be considered” means discretion, not prohibition. The six-month rule was never a rule.
CAMH — Psychological Associates cannot use equal-pay arguments to undo a negotiated wage band, but an allegation that the employer built a false job description to defeat the claim survives to a hearing.
Blanche River Health — where the agreement confines the wage comparison to classifications inside the bargaining unit, the evidence is confined there too.
ATTENDANCE, BENEFITS & SETTLEMENT
5 decisions
EllisDon (Osler) — an insurer’s age-65 LTD cut-off cannot override centrally bargained HOODIP language. The application must be considered.
SickKids — a settlement reached by offer and acceptance binds, even where the grievor later refuses to sign the minutes.
Compass Group (Runnymede) — bargaining history breaks the tie on an ambiguous “plus $150” STD formula, in the employer’s favour.
Brockville Mental Health Centre — a 0.5 FTE commitment is not a guarantee of hours. No make-up shift owed when a holiday closure displaces one.
AGENCY STAFF & WORKLOAD
2 decisions
Chartwell Wynfield — a staffing optimization that left a heavier dietary workload after occupancy rose did not breach the agreement or the OHSA. Heavier is not unsafe.
ONTARIO • HOSPITALS • HLDAA
Who Pays for the Spending Account?
8 interest arbitration decisions
ONTARIO • PARAMEDICS • EMS
The 3.5% Pattern Reaches Paramedics
3 decisions · ASCBA and grievance
ONTARIO • HLDAA INTEREST ARBITRATION • LTC & RETIREMENT HOMES
COVER REPORT · APRIL – JUNE 2026
3.5% Holds: Wage Award Trends in LTC and Retirement Homes
The 3.5% general wage increase is now near-universal across both sectors — and boards are consistently rejecting the argument that a deteriorating economy justifies departing from it. The live fights have moved elsewhere: the 1% mid-term adjustment that separates long-term care from retirement homes, RPN and classification-specific catch-up, and a growing stream of Permanent Wage Enhancement implementation disputes.
3.5%
GWI NORM
2025 & 2026
+1%
MID-TERM INCREASE
LTC ONLY
$1-$2
RPN ADJUSTMENT
NEAR-UNIVERSAL IIN LTC
36
CASES
SUMMARIZED
Long-Term Care Homes
14 Cases
- Boards continue to track the SEIU Master Award structure — 3.5% / 1.0% / 3.5% — replicated with a one-year lag for agreements running into 2026 and 2027.
- The 1% mid-term increase remains contested but is generally granted where the SEIU Master pattern applies.
- RPN adjustments of $1.00–$2.00/hr are near-universal, with several boards aligning rates to the SEIU-Extendicare top rates.
- Permanent Wage Enhancement implementation continues to generate supplementary awards.
Retirement Homes
22 Cases
- The 3.5% annual GWI is universal — no board departed from it, despite employer submissions on economic uncertainty.
- No retirement home award included the 1% mid-term increase, keeping the sector distinction firmly in place.
- RPN adjustments of $0.50–$1.50/hr remain common, alongside minimum-wage floor corrections.
- RRSP contributions ($0.10–$0.25/hr) are being introduced or increased across the sector.
and board rationales for all 36 decisions.
ACROSS THE COUNTRY • PROVINCIAL CASE LAW UPDATE
9 CASES
6 CASES
An arbitrator’s ruling that “efficiency” cannot be buried inside other promotion criteria on a scoring matrix; plain language prevailing over bargaining history in a pro-ration dispute over education expense reimbursement; a decision drawing the line between mandatory and voluntary training for salary maintenance purposes; a human rights complaint against a regulatory body dismissed for lack of evidence linking a disability to a denied vaccine exemption; a vaccine mandate objection rejected as a personal safety concern rather than a sincerely held religious belief; and a ruling that universal pre-shift testing is not evidence that an employer perceived an employee as disabled.
3 CASES
A continuing grievance doctrine that revived a nurse’s benefit enrolment claim discovered nearly seven years after the breach; an arbitral ruling on whether internationally trained health professionals’ additional credentials attract an academic allowance; and a decision on whether a location-based premium applies shift-by-shift or only where a position is solely designated to certain locations.
7 CASES
An essential services agreement that quietly voided itself when the workforce outgrew its own schedule; a mid-strike order for more hands on the floor after thrice-daily audits traced a record number of pressure injuries to missed repositioning; and a single absent word — “rate” — that decided whether working strikers earn overtime. Plus a duty-of-fair-representation complaint lost to the 90-day clock, a managerial exclusion that collapsed once the Board looked past the job description to what the employee actually did, and a seventeen-year practice of splitting an LPN “in charge” premium between two nurses found to breach the agreement.
4 CASES
A privacy breach involving a pharmacy technician who disclosed a patient’s health information via Snapchat; an interest arbitration award granting medical residents a 10.5% wage increase over three years; an arbitrator permitting an employer to contract out bargaining-unit work during a critical staffing crisis despite a procedural breach; and privacy breach findings against a health information service and a medical clinic after a “rogue employee” repeatedly snooped on patient records.