There will be no mediated deal between the provincial government and Nova Scotias four health care unions.

The two sides have been in talks for the last 45 days with British Columbia-based mediator James Dorsey. Dorsey, who has made multiple trips to Nova Scotia for the process, returned home on Thursday and the mediation clock will run out as of midnight, said one union source, speaking on condition on anonymity because leaders agreed to a media blackout.

The mediation process was part of parameters laid out in Bill 1, the Liberal governments centrepiece legislation of the autumn sitting, that will merge nine district health authorities into one as of April 1. To facilitate that and to reduce the number of contracts to be negotiated and ending what the health minister has called an ongoing cycle of bargaining Bill 1 included a clause that each of the four unions could only represent one classification of worker.

A proposal from the four unions to work in bargaining associations in reaching agreements was rejected by the province. Health and Wellness Minister Leo Glavine said at the time that the proposal would still have too many people at the table and wouldnt do enough to reduce the number of contracts being negotiated.

Despite protests from the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Nova Scotia Government & General Employees Union, the Nova Scotia Nurses Union and Unifor, the Grits passed the legislation with the support of the Progressive Conservatives in early October. That triggered the 45-day clock for mediation. With the clock set to expire, a 45-day arbitration period will begin as of midnight on Tuesday.

Dorsey will now be tasked with determining which union gets assigned to each of the four classifications: nurses, health care, clerical and service.

A union source characterized talks so far as extremely tough, in no small part because of how much the NSGEU stands to lose. Nova Scotias largest union will lose upwards of 9,000 members through this process, including its nurses. Bill 1 stipulates each union must have a history of representing the groups it will represent in the future. This means the nurses union must get nurses, a move that will result in a windfall of thousands of new members.

Unifor, because it only represents workers in the health care and service classifications, is a lock to get service, where it has the larger percentage of members.

The real question is what happens with the health care and clerical classifications. Based on numbers released by the Health Association of Nova Scotia, it would seem that NSGEU could get clerical, based on it representing two-thirds of the workers in that classification. If that comes to pass, CUPE would take health care and with it gain thousands of members, more than making up for the people it would lose in other categories.

Union sources on Monday had high praise for Dorseys work throughout the process hes the best in the business, said one source but the consensus was that the governments parameters removed any wiggle room for Dorsey to find an arrangement that would be palatable to everyone.

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Mediation talks between health care unions, province fail