The Yukon Employees Union and the Yukon Hospital Corp. will be back at the bargaining table next week after going incommunicado for more than a month, delaying the possibility of a strike.

Nearly 90 per cent of members — lab and pharmacy technicians, administrators and custodial staff — from the territory’s three hospitals voted in favour of strike action April 1 after talks broke down in early March.

That gave them the mandate for a work stoppage at any time.

The employees are hoping to shift control over their pension plan — one of the main sticking points — from the hospital corporation’s board of trustees to a 50-50 share with the union, in line with each side’s contribution to the plan.

“I’m really glad that they’re coming to the table so soon and that we don’t have to wait until May, when a federal mediator is available,” union president Steve Geick said in an interview today.

The decision to sit back down in the same room with corporation negotiators was made Wednesday morning by the hospital corporation.

“We put it out there publicly and through the negotiator that we are prepared to go back to the table pretty much immediately,” Geick told the Star Tuesday.

The two parties are scheduled to meet April 24-25.

A hospital corporation spokesman said the board is ready “to work through the issues.”

Even if work stoppage — in the form of rotating job action, for example — did occur, essential services agreements “ensure that we can minimize the impact to patient services,” said James Low.

“It’s true that it wouldn’t be a full staff,” he added.

“The last thing we want to do is take members out on strike,” Geick said.

“We want to get back to the table ... and get a deal.”

That deal hinges largely on the pension plan.

As it stands, the collective agreement allows a pension committee to make recommendations to the hospital corporation board, which can then approve changes without ratification from the employees.

“Basically, about a year ago, the hospital board wanted to go to a 50-50 contribution plan,” Geick said.

“If we’re paying 50 per cent, we should have a say in anything major that goes on in the plan.”

Previously, the corporation paid 60 per cent of plan contributions while employees forked over the remaining 40 per cent.

The hospital corporation declined comment on the issues up for negotiation.

“The bargaining table — that’s where that discussion should happen,” Low said.

The most recent collective agreement expired about seven months ago, with 250 employees from the Whitehorse General Hospital, Dawson City Community Hospital and Watson Lake Community Hospital now in a position for work stoppage.

“This is serious, Mr. Speaker,” NDP Health critic Lois Moorcroft told the legislature Monday.

“Will the minister ensure that the hospital corporation returns to the bargaining table until a fair deal is reached with its employees?”

Health and Social Services Minister Mike Nixon, while responsible for health care provision in the territory, is not involved in negotiations.

“(T)here is an essential services agreement in place so that there will be minimal disruption in those essential services to hospital patients, and we look forward to the outcomes of these negotiations and deliberations,” Nixon said in the House Monday.

The hospital corporation is an independent corporation, analogous to Yukon College, with funding from the government and a board appointed by the executive council.

“(T)he corporation is not an agent of the government,” the Yukon Hospital Act states.