Yesterday, a meeting was scheduled with the President of Treasury Board and Minister of Finance, Jerome Kennedy.  Upon our arrival at the Confederation Building we were informed Mr. Kennedy had to attend an outside meeting unexpectedly and would be unable to meet with us. The Assistant Deputy Minister – Geoff Williams – did agree to meet.  We outlined a number of issues we had hoped to address with the Minister.

Experience Credits – hired prior to July 1, 2008

 One of these was the Experience Credits.  Mr. Williams indicated that the new wording in Experience Credits giving one step for every one year of experience, applies to the AAHP; Nurses Union and NAPE Lab and X-Ray and Health Professional collective agreements.  Treasury Board is maintaining its position, that the change will only be effective for employees who were hired July 1, 2008 or since.  He further states, that Experience Credits are applied, upon hiring and those individuals hired prior to July 1, 2008 would have had the experience credits applied under the old collective agreement language, and Treasury Board are not prepared to adjust those hired prior to July 1, 2008. 

The only way we may be able to get this changed – so that the application of Experience credits is fair and reasonable to all – is through a political decision.  We will be bringing this up again when we meet with Kennedy.

Experience Credits – hired July 1, 2008 or later

Williams did confirm that Treasury Board would be sending the authorization as of yesterday, to the Health Boards to pay and make adjustments to the Experience Credits for employees hired on July 1, 2008 or later.  Authorization will also be sent to begin making the adjustments on the Automobile Allowance.  This will be a manual process and may take Payroll some time to calculate.  This has been a problem in Eastern Health – however, to the best of my knowledge, Central Health has already made these adjustments.