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Nurses seek job security

Continued from page 1

Johnson was commenting on retraining,
an issue the union wants addressed in con-
a talks that broke off indefinitely on June

The union sees more and more nurses
being shifted into community based work as
the privatization of mental health services
continues. It has already reduced the size of
Riverview, the Coquitlam based institute, to

1,000 beds from the previous 4,800. Wood-
lands is slated to close in 1992.

UPN labour relations director Dwight
Wenham said Riverview’s patients are being
transferred to privately-run boarding homes
or to non-profit societies, as has been the
case in the closed Tranquille facility in Kam-
loops the downsized Woodlands and Glen-
dale institute in Victoria.

“It’s a form of privatization, but not as
blatant as the highways privatization,” he
said in an interview.

The approximately 2,400 UPN and
BCNU members, who bargain jointly with
the ministries of health, and social services
and housing, have fallen steadily behind
their general hospital counterparts in wages
since the restraint program of the early
Eighties.

They used to earn slightly better salaries
until 1983, when general hospital workers
won wage gains that were accepted by the
former Compensation Stabilization Pro-
gram commissioner Ed Peck. But Peck sub-
sequently overruled an arbitrator’s award of
an equal increase to the government nurses
that year, Wenham said.

In 1986 their wages fell further behind
when Peck allowed an increase above CSP
guidelines to general hospital nurses in ac-
knowledging hospitals’ recruiting problems.
More and more nurses were leaving the
province and the country in search of better
wages. Psychiatric nurses, not in as great a
demand, were held to the guidelines.

Last year militant general hospital nurses
in the BCNU forced their negotiating com-
mittee back to the bargaining table and sub-
sequently achieved a wage settlement that
partially undid the worst ravages of the res-
traint program years. It lifted the wages of
the nurses considerably above those of their
_ psychiatric counterparts, whose three-year
agreement expired last December.

“Government nurses are basically being
treated as second-class citizens,” Johnson
said in an interview during the fifth day of

Psych nurses and families picket Woodlands in New Westminster.

the Woodlands occupation. He said he
makes about $12,000 per year less than a
general hospital nurse, while members of his
union must deal with patients who are dif-
ficult to handle.

Johnson said job security is a key issue,
since union members face an uncertain fu-
ture with downsizing and closures. He
charged that the government has failed to set
any facilities in place for the shift to com-
munity based services that will be needed.

The nurses will continue to occupy the
building until arrested or until Woodlands
adheres to the provisions of the IRC order it
sought establishing minimum staffing levels
during the strike, Johnson said.

The unions, in line with the B.C. Federa-
tion of Labour boycott, did not appear before
the council to contest Woodlands’ applica-
tion to schedule shifts — normally done by
the unions — on the basis of a seven-day
week, he reported.

“They asked for the moon and they got
it,” Johnson said, pointing out that the seven-
day week means in some cases more staff
are required than would be scheduled if
there were no strike. Less staff are scheduled
on weekends in a normal work situation.

The employer has found it difficult to get
the required number of staff, and has ar-
bitrarily reduced minimum levels per shift

— in violation of the IRC order, Johnson
said.

He pointed to a statement in the IRC
order, over the signature of vice-chair
Richard Longpre, that stated: “The above
designations may be increased by agree-
ment of the parties or revised by successful
application to the council by the employer
or the unions.”

The union would not be allowed to ignore
an IRC order, so neither should the em-
ployer, Johnson asserted.

The two unions were served with a Writ
of Summons from the B.C. Supreme Court
on July 3. The writ is not an injunction, but
a notice of possible injunction, and since
then the unions were advised the employer
was taking the “short notice” route and seek-
ing an injunction in B.C. Supreme Court last
Friday.

Last week Health Minister John Jansen
promised a return to the bargaining table,
citing a commitment from the minister of
finance. But he also said that wage parity
was difficult to determine.

Johnson disputes this, noting that when
psychiatric nurses earned more money and
were being rolled back by the CSP, they
were told: “A nurse is a nurse is a nurse.”

“And that’s what we’re saying now,” he
said.

Shock therapy
prompts split
in Solidarity

Sixty-three of Solidarity’s 150-member
Civic Committee resigned June 24 after a
drawn-out battle with recently re-elected
Solidarity leader Lech Walesa because of his
efforts to use the organization for his pres-
idential ambitions. The Civic Committee is
Soidarity’s national “political arm.” Among
the 63 are many who have been associated
with Walesa from the beginning of the Sol-
idarity movement.

Soidarity’s crisis reflects the profound
crisis of Polish life as the Solidarity-dom-
inated government employs economic
“shock therapy” methods to pass from a
socialist to a capitalist economy.

In a country which had practically full
employment, joblessness had soared to
more than 500,000 by June 16. The publica-
tion Gazeta Wyborcza forecast another
sharp increase by the end of August, as plans
were announced by 6,900 enterprises to lay
off 270,000 workers.

The International Monetary Fund has
predicted two million unemployed by the
end of the year.

Labour and other conflicts are increasing
in number and scope. Two weeks ago, the
government used militia, water cannon and
armoured personnel carriers to break up a
farmers’ protest blackade on the main War-
saw-Gdansk highway. There have been
many such actions, and also strikes, includ-
ing railway workers’ actions, opposed by
Solidarity and the government, but suppor-
ted by the seven-million member All-Poland
Union Federation (OPZZ), now the largest
trade union federation in the country. A
large-scale textile workers’ strike may soon
occur.

Though inflation had been substantially
lowered, consumer prices rose 5.4 per cent
in May and 8.1 per cent in April — an
intolerable burden when wages are frozen
and unemployment is growing.

As popular rejection of Solidarity’s
“shock therapy” economic program grows,
Walesa finds himself in difficulties. “People
do not like me because of the low wages,”
he complained last week. “I am losing my
popularity because of unemployment.”

SACP readies for public role with new influence

By SOUTHSCAN

JOHANNESBURG—Nationwide con-
sultations are underway within South Afri-
_ ca’s still-underground Communist Party
(SACP) that could substantialy transform
the party when it finally emerges publicly.
The party is expected to begin functioning
normally within a matter of months.

Indications so far, according to an under-
ground SACP official inside the country, are
that it will transform itself into a mass party,
without some of the tough membership re-
quirements evolved during four decades of
illegality.

In a recent interview, the SACP official
said the party was still underground because
formal legalization on Feb. 2 “has not
created conditions where the party can exist
freely.

“Technically, there are still laws cir-
cumscribing the work of Communists,” the
official said. “The actual work of propagat-
ing communism and organizing a party is
still illegal under the Internal Security Act.”

The party’s full “occupation of the legal
space opened up by its unbanning,” the of-
ficial added, “will await the point at which
progress toward democracy has become ir-

reversible." The official is optimistic that
this could take place soon, but said it was not
yet clear how soon.

The party inends, meanwhile, to establish
a public presence in the country, possibly
during the third quarter of this year. The
underground worker also told the Johannes-
burg-based journal, Work In Progress, that
this processs is likely to involve the opening
of SACP offices, identification of at least
some of its internal leadership and basing its
publications, Umsebenzi and the African
Communist, inside the country. Party offi-
cials consider the publications as vital ele-
ments given limitations on establishing an
immediate and high-profile public presence.

Paralleling those measures, however, the
Communists will continue operating an un-
derground network. The SACP believes that
its own position differs from that of its long-
time ally, the African National Congress,
legalized at the same time. While the gov-
emment of President FW. de Klerk is eager
to negotiate with the ANC, it remains hostile
to the SACP presence.

Prior to the May 2 talks-about-talks in
Cape Town, de Klerk worked hard but un-
successfully to persuade ANC deputy presi-

dent Nelson Mandela to exclude SACP gen-
eral secretary Joe Slovo from the ANC’s
talks team.

The president and other key government
officials then attempted to block Slovo’s
presence at a “report-back” rally in Soweto
two days after the Cape Town meeting.

They were again unsuccessful, and ex-
president P.W. Botha then stepped in to un-
derscore the political problem this created
for de Klerk. Botha publicly resigned his
54-year membership in the ruling National
Party, to protest the negotiations with Com-
munists, and encouraged other Nationalists
to follow suit.

Full emergence of the SACP, and the
political conditions it requires, will only be

achieved, said the official, as a result of ~

sustained pressure on the de Klerk govern-
ment.

“A key element in ensuring irreversibility
is to develop mass formation. The ANC
undoubtedly has the capacity to become an
organized formation of one million mem-
bers or more this year. The SACP cannot
aspire to such ambitious membership.”

Thus, for now, opposition energy will be
directed at building the membership and

organization of the ANC. This will enable
the ANC, in tum, to spearhead the creation
of conditions in which all formations, in-
cluding the SACP, can function with com-
plete openness.

Inthe meantime, the party’s underground
structures are debating the nature of that
open party. According to Slovo, the struc-
tures are led by black, working class party
members.

One of the key elements in the debates is
the potential base that has grown up behind
the banner of the party since its was out-
lawed nearly 40 years ago.

‘Despite areas of overlap between sup-
porters for the ANC and for the armed strug-
gle of Umkhonto we Sizwe (the movement’s

‘military unit),” noted the unnamed SACP

official, “there is a firm (party) constituency
within the working class, within the militant
youth and within a small but growing radical
intelligentsia. So the question of a mass
party has been raised ....”

Abridged from The Guardian

Pacific Tribune, July 9, 1990 « 3

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