MAWS 2025 Initiatives – October Status Update

Message from your MAWS Committee Chair, Wayne Chacun

Update: October 10, 2025

Wage Adjustments

After the 2025 General Wage Increase (GWI) was applied to members’ new wage scales, a $3.00/hour step increase was added to all second-to-last wage scale steps (excluding for ERS), with an equivalent percentage applied to all other steps. COMPLETE

Rural Wage Differential

This differential was designed to provide a higher wage scale for anyone working below the 53rd parallel AND outside the City of Winnipeg in an effort to address particular recruitment and retention challenges (2.5% above urban wage scales in 2025, going up to 5% in 2027).

We have been assured that the rural wage differential will be applied for our Brandon members, but the differential has not yet been implemented for any MAHCP member. The Employer has so far declined to implement the wage differential until the six-step salary structure has been finalized, which is still underway. Please continue to track your hours and your overtime if you’re a member working in rural Manitoba. TIMELINE FOR IMPLEMENTATION: TBD

Six-step Salary Structure

Within six months of the contract’s June 17^th implementation deadline, the committee should deliver to Employers a six-step salary structure for all allied health classifications across all Employers Organizations. This standardized structure will enable some members to reach top of scale sooner, and wages will not be negatively affected by the change.

The committee has conducted its initial analysis, identifying all classifications with more than six salary steps to be standardized to six. (Those with fewer than six steps will not be touched.) Our Finance team is calculating the scales, which will need to be vetted and agreed to by the Employers Organizations. Please note that implementation of the new scales is an Employer responsibility. TIMELINE FOR DELIVERY TO EMPLOYERS: December 2025

Review of Mental Health & Addictions, Social Work, and Community occupations

This initiative is a secondary, in-depth review of three occupations’ classification groupings (pay bands) in terms of how and where classifications have been slotted. The initial grouping work was completed and rolled out by the MAWS 2023 committee with a goal to standardize and group similar classifications according to qualifications and position requirements (ie, level of education, professional certification/registration, years of experience), as well as level of responsibility and accountability, lived experience, and more. This complex process affected roughly 1,300 Mental Health & Addictions, Community, and Social Work members, and resulted in some members challenging their placement within the resulting framework of 23 classification groupings.

With MAWS 2025, the committee is undertaking a round of reviews of these groupings, and we will be leveraging available job descriptions and comparing requirements across Employers Organizations. If you are part of our Community, Mental Health & Addictions, or Social Work membership, when we’re ready to launch step one of this initiative, you will receive a direct link to a landing page. We will provide instructions to guide you in your job description review and pay band comparison process, as well as a link to a form to complete if your analysis uncovers a discrepancy or error. TIMELINE FOR COMPLETION: TBD

Market Adjustments

Any MAWS funds remaining after the initiatives above have been completed will be used for specific market adjustments as negotiated and agreed to by the joint committee. If you submitted a bargaining proposal related to your wage prior to the current contract’s ratification, the committee will consider it AFTER all other MAWS 2025 initiatives are funded. TIMELINE FOR COMPLETION: TBD

Ontario Prairie West Average Review

Once all the new contract’s wage increments and differentials have been finalized and implemented, the MAWS committee will perform a comparative analysis of final scales to the Ontario Prairies West Average (OPAW). The goal of this phase is to determine how Manitoba allied health salaries stack up against their peers’ salaries (in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia). This work will be complete in time for the next round of Central Table negotiations to enable us to put forward strong bargaining proposals rooted in research and backed by comparative evidence. TIMELINE FOR COMPLETION: TBD

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Thank you again for your trust in the ongoing work of the committee. Keep in mind that we will always push for the greatest gains for all members, while acknowledging that some of our members continue to lag behind their peers. Please stay tuned to your email for future MAWS updates.