Sodexho Canada Ltd. will give its hospital workers a 25 percent wage increase over two years after accepting the recommendations of mediator Vince Ready. This agreement brought an end to a 51-day strike that commenced in the fall of 2005.
The wage increase applies to about 1,450 Sodexo employees who perform contracted out work at hospitals and long-term care facilities in B.C. The wage increase is part of a first collective agreement bargained between Sodexho and the Hospital Employees Union, the bargaining agent that represents the dietary, cleaning and other support workers at most large hospitals throughout the Lower Mainland and Victoria.
The work performed by HEU members was contracted out to Sodexho in 2003 after the provincial government passed Bill 29, the Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act, which permitted hospital employers in B.C. to contract out non-clinical support services regardless of any collective agreement prohibitions on such contracting out.