ONA Strike(File photo) Wage increases have been awarded to about 3,000 Community Care Access Centre registered nurses and health professionals, including about 60 in North Bay.

This after an arbitration hearing was held earlier this month.

The Ontario Nurses Association members went out on strike at the end of January.

They were on the picket lines 17 days before returning to work after an agreement to send the dispute to arbitration.

Members at the two northern CCACs will receive a 1.4 percent increase in year one and a 3.4 percent increase in year two.

This provides them with a degree of catch-up pay with their southern counterparts. The increases are retroactive to April 1st, 2014.

In a release, ONA President Linda Haslam-Stroud, RN says, “We said all along that we wanted to negotiate a fair contract after taking a two-year wage freeze in the last contract, but these employers would rather we froze on the picket lines in minus-30 temperatures and impact our patients and families who rely on community health care than provide the same wage increase that 57,000 other ONA members received.”

The contract will expire on March 31, 2016