LABOR HEU backed in strike over equal pay Members of the Hospital Employees Union on strike against several long term care facilities opened new talks with the Continuing Care Employee Relations Association (CCERA) Apr. 26 — this time armed with new arbitrataor’s ruling that supports their three-year-old demand for equal pay. The new round of negotiations, a first since February, was the result of an agree- ment on the resumption of talks, worked out by both sides and voted on last week. But HEU members began rotating job action Mar. 14 after three frustrating years of seeking wage parity with workers in acute care facilities and after an arbitrator’s report giving them parity was thrown out on a technicality by B.C. Supreme Court. The union began full-scale strike action at various facilities early in April, and eight long term care homes in the Kootenays, Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland are now behind picket lines. Some 700 HEU members are involved — 450 of them actually on strike — and 1,300 beds are affected although the union, in an agreement worked out with the Labor Relations Board, is maintaing essential ser- vices. At stake is the long standing demand for parity of long term care workers with their counterparts in acute care hospitals. The wage gap ranges anywhere from 10 percent to 50 per cent at Haro Park Lodge in Van- couver where workers have not had a wage increase since certification in October, 1981. All but one of the facilities have been without a collective agreement since Mar. 1982, the result of three years of : ees stonewalling on the wage parity demand. CCERA, originally set up in October, 1984 to take over bargaining from individ- ual facilities, has sought to justify the dispar- ity by insisting that long term care work is different from that done by acute care workers. But the union’s case got a boost Apr. 19 when arbitrator Allan Hope, who chaired an arbitration board that settled the terms of an agreement between the New Vista Care Home and the HEU, ruled that the prevailing standard in the health industry is the standard agreement between the HEU and Hospital Labor Relations — the agree- ment covering acute care hospitals. ““We are not able to make a finding that the nature of the work performed by long- term care employees differs from acute care employees in any industrial relations sense which would affect the application of the concept of equal pay for equal work,” the three-member arbitration panel ruled. The board also referred obliquely to the CCERA dispute, noting that the union’s efforts to secure a master agreement “‘is being stoutly resisted by the employers in that component of the industry. “But in an industrial relations setting where equal pay for equal work is an accepted criterion, a pressure towards uni- formity of terms and conditions of employment in a particular industry is inev- itable,” the board stated. HEU has also won considerable solidar- MAY DAY GREETINGS from the United Fishermen & Allied Workers Union Local 7 1935 ON-TO-OTTAWA TREK COMMITTEE May Day Greetings from the fighting youth of the dirty thirties to today’s youth. To fight is to win. 1985 28 ¢ PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 1, 1985 Campbell River, Courtenay and District Labor Council May Day Greetings for work and wages Best wishes to the On-to-Ottawa Trekkers JACK GEROW...welcomes Victoria Labor Council action. ity from the trade union movement in the strike. Canadian Union of Public Employees president Jeff Rose, who recently worked out an agreement with HEU to permit the hospital workers union to re-affiliate to the Canadian Labor Congress, sent a telegram Apr. 11, offering CUPE’s full financial, moral and picket line support. In Victoria, the labor council at its last meeting voted to boycott this year’s Red Shield Appeal, sponsored by the Salvation Army, until it settles with the workers at its Victoria facility, Sunset Lodge. The move sparked the ire of Interna- tional Woodworkers of America president Jack Munro who blasted the labor council for its act of solidarity. . “I don’t know what the hell makes these guys tick, maybe they don’t tick at all,” Munro told the media, referring to the council. “Maybe they just walk around in a vacuum, but the IWA membership is sure as hell not going to be asked to boycott the Salvation Army.” He went on to attack HEU president Jack Gerow as a “flash in the pan” saying that it was “ridiculous” for him to talk about a boycott, despite the fact the resolu- tion urging the boycott came from the council executive at the meeting where the. HEU delegates were being sworn in for the first time. In response, Gerow welcomed the sup port of the Victoria council. “The Salvation Army can’t have it both ways,” he said. “Tt can’t claim to support working people while trying to negotiate second class wages for is employees. “T found Jack Munro’s comments unfal tunate because in the event any IWA loca was on the picket line, especially after thre years without a collective agreement, they could expect the full support of the HEU. The Vancouver and District Labo Council designated Apr. 20 as HEU Sup port Day and bolstered the union’s pické lines on that day. The support has been crucial, parti larly because of the media’s tendency ™ focus only on the effect of the strike on lont term care residents. In an effort to demonstrate that thell strike was not intended to inconvenie residents, the HEU launched a “resid appreciation day”, offering to take time from picketing to spend time with them But in seven facilities, they “met locke doors and intransigent hospital administfé tors’’, the union said. _ MAY DAY | from New Westminster Women’s Auxiliary International —— “ Longshoremen’ SS ‘and — Warehousemen’ Ss _ Union : ‘am enetesng 1 v. $ to our brothers & sisters inthe labor movement on this May Day, 1985 | United Food & Commercial Workers j 379 - 12th Street, New Westminster, 528-8811 Best Wishes Local 2000 Leif Hansen, President Hugo Tims, Secretary-Treasurer _ Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street — ‘Vancouver, B.C. V5K 125. Phone 251-1186 _ 0 ee ew 8 9 ee 8 ee eee ee eat (READ THE P Postal ‘Gods 140) 2yrs.$250 6mo.$80) Foreign 1 yr. eu - Billme later 0 Donations — 628 © Boe: eS ee ee ee 20.02 > 8! oe tee eee eee