It is my privilege to introduce myself as your Executive Director.  While very new in the role (full-time commenced December 28), I am grateful to have been entrusted with the opportunity to provide leadership to the membership of HSAS. The work you do is incredibly important.  While there is much diversity in the roles our members serve, there is commonality in that the work carried out is of profound value.

Today’s reality is that our members are working in increasingly difficult conditions with demands ever-increasing and frequent under-staffing a constant.  At a recent Executive Council meeting, the sentiment of ‘we love our job, but conditions we have little control over, are making it incredibly difficult to do our work in a sustainable and sufficient way – we are hurting and so is our health care system’ was conveyed with professionalism, passion and conviction. 

There is little doubt our health care system is in need of significant repair.  There are no quick and easy fixes.  What there is however, is an opportunity to improve your working conditions and health care outcomes through consistent effort and focusing on that which we can do.  There have been small but significant signs of hope resulting from the efforts of your Executive Council and HSAS staff. Your collective agreement with SAHO contains provisions to revise the salary grid in response to market demands for specific classifications.  Recent market supplement reviews have resulted in significant salary increases for portions of our membership.  Additionally, we recently received a substantive arbitration win related to the calculation of hours for increment purposes for members working in an other than full time capacity.  This is anticipated to result in compensation to those members affected by the Saskatchewan Health Authority not following the collective agreement appropriately. These are two examples of the ‘behind the scenes’ work your Executive and staff are doing on behalf of members.

HSAS is committed to establishing and improving working relationships with the employer and government. We believe and hope they have a similar desire. While effective advocacy for our members does, at times, need to take a hard ‘line in the sand’ approach, there is always value in building purposeful, positive, and solution-focused relationships.  When those relationships are realized, better outcomes for our members can result.

I do look forward to meeting many of you in person.  We are exploring the means by which to visit and hear from staff in the workplace.  If you are aware of an opportunity to do so, please reach out and we will do our absolute best to meet you where you are at.  For an invitation such as this or any other reason, I can be reached at either our Regina or Saskatoon office – 1 888 565-3399 or [email protected]. 

Thank you for your continued support.

Al Boutin