SHA put triage nurses in the right union but breached bargaining duty, board rules

The Saskatchewan Health Authority committed an unfair labour practice when it assigned a new telephone-triage nursing position without genuinely trying to resolve another union’s objection, even though the position ultimately belonged in the nurses’ bargaining unit.

In Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan v. Saskatchewan Health Authority and Saskatchewan Union of Nurses, 2026 SKLRB 35, dated July 13, 2026, the Saskatchewan Labour Relations Board rejected HSAS’s attempt to bring the job into its unit but upheld its complaint about the employer’s refusal to bargain.

The board ordered the health authority to cease refusing to bargain over new positions and post the reasons at Regina’s Medical Communication and Coordination Centre for 60 days. It did not transfer the position or award compensation.

A new role for lower-acuity 911 calls

The dispute concerned the Medical Communication Centre Emergency Care Nurse position associated with the Emergency Communication Nurse System. The new role receives lower-acuity calls referred from 911 and uses professional judgment, supported by software, to assess patients and identify suitable care or referrals.

HSAS already represented emergency medical dispatchers and dispatch coordinators at the Regina centre. It argued that the new position resembled work within its unit rather than nursing work. SHA and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses maintained that it was a nursing position.

The health authority developed a job description in late 2023 and early 2024. It was evaluated within the nurses’ pay scale, and a new triage initiative was publicly announced in April 2024.

HSAS challenged the proposed assignment in subsequent discussions and repeatedly asked for the job description. SHA did not provide it until March 2025, after posting and filling the position. The board found no explanation for the prolonged withholding beyond the authority’s view that the work belonged to nurses.

What the worker does matters more than the label

SHA argued that the job was not genuinely new because it fell within the existing Nurse A pay category. The board disagreed. A new job description, new work, a new location for SUN-represented nurses and distinct training requirements established that this was a new position. Nurse A was a pay-scale category, not a specific job description.

For bargaining-unit placement, the board applied the health-sector regulations and existing certification orders. These focus on the employee’s primary function rather than treating educational credentials or professional registration as conclusive.

The evidence showed that the nurse called patients back, assessed symptoms with the assistance of the system and used clinical judgment to choose treatment or referral options. The nurse could identify an emergency when a call was no longer low acuity.

The board found that this was primarily patient care. Providing advice by telephone did not make it something other than nursing, and any assessor or coordinator work was incidental to that primary function.

Because the position fell within SUN’s existing bargaining-unit description, the board did not need to undertake the broader balancing exercise used to allocate genuinely new classifications between competing units. It dismissed HSAS’s amendment application.

A correct assignment did not excuse the process

The separate unfair labour practice issue turned on SHA’s duty to bargain when creating a new position in a multi-union workplace.

The board described the default process: notify interested unions, seek agreement, apply to the board if the assignment remains disputed, and seek an interim arrangement or ruling if urgent staffing is necessary. But it also emphasized that the duty must be applied contextually rather than as an inflexible checklist.

What was required was a genuine effort to resolve the disagreement. SHA did not make that effort. HSAS objected as soon as it learned of the proposed assignment, yet the authority neither obtained consent nor sought a board ruling and failed to supply the basic job description while repeatedly maintaining that the job was nursing work.

An invitation to a broad stakeholder session and those exchanges did not satisfy the bargaining obligation. The resulting declaration, cessation order and 60-day posting requirement addressed that process failure while leaving the correctly assigned nursing role in SUN’s unit.