The arbitrator occupied the traditional canons of contractual interpretation and read the relevant provisions of the collective agreement throughout the contract. The Arbitrator found that the language of the collective agreement, when read as a whole and all provisions obtain a vote, distinguishes long-term dismissals resulting from integration, as provided for in Article 10.14, and those caused by other inserthes. Adjudicator Reilly`s decision gives hospital employers some optimism about the redundancies provisions of the NAOS collective agreement and the obligations to pay retirement and separation benefits. Prior to Adjudicator Reilly`s decision, arbitrators always held that a nurse was entitled to an old age and/or separation allowance, even if positions were vacant elsewhere in the hospital concerned, as soon as the provisions of the COLLECTIVE agreement ONA had been triggered. The resulting costs to hospitals have been considerable. Ontario Arbitrator Frank Reilly recently dismissed a complaint by the Ontario Human Rights Association that the employer, St. Michael`s Hospital in Toronto, violated the collective agreement by failing to include retirement or separation benefits in the benefits options for nurses who are laid off. At St. Michael`s Hospital and the Ontario Nurses Association (April 2010), Adjudicator Reilly applied the traditional canons of conventional interpretation to the collective agreement and decided that the benefits provided to licensed nurses vary according to the grounds for dismissal. In these circumstances, the Saint-Michel Hospital was not required to grant retirement or separation allowances to dismissed nurses and the union`s political complaint was dismissed. The ONA spent two weeks discussing its approximately 60,000 NNRs and health care professionals who provide care in Ontario hospitals. Discussions ended late last week with a number of important outstanding issues that have not yet been resolved due to the restrictions imposed by Bill 124, the ONA said. „The role and value of RNAs in providing quality health care to Ontarians has not been recognized.

The urgent need to recruit and maintain RNAs to ensure adequate and secure RN staff resources are available is not being addressed,“ says McKenna. This province suffers from a severe shortage of care, and many Ontario hospitals are crippled by vacancies in care centres they feel are impossible to fill and soil maintenance. The NRO and THE OHA will now hold arbitration on March 25 and 26 to reach a collective agreement. Articles 10.13 and 10.14 of the collective agreement also weighed on long-term redundancies, but the redundancies in these sections are those resulting from integration. The collective agreement provides for the meaning of the concept of „integration“ in the Municipal Health System Integration Act (2006). It says that the ONA is the union representing more than 68,000 registered nurses and health professionals, as well as more than 18,000 subsidiaries of nursing students who are cared for in hospitals, long-term care centers, public health, commune, clinics and industry.