British Columbia

‘Put $

_ Continued from page 1
vices and provide personnel for emergen-
cies. Some 80 of the province’s 144
hospitals are were being picketed at Trib-
une press time.
_ In addition, the HEU, which earlier
issued 72-hour strike notice to a number of
hospitals and institutions, itself launched
strike action at 15 hospitals Thursday
morning. Four x PE
others were to be
struck Thursday
afternoon and
more Over the next
few days. The strike
action included two
hospitals not pre-
viously struck by
HLRA.

More than 100
HEU members also
demonstrated out-
side the offices of
Hospital Labour
Relations Thurs-
| day to protest the
employer group’s
action in “reneg-
Ing On its respon-
sibility to bargain,”
HEU communica-
» tions, director

Howie Smith told | “i ¥
the Tribune. McPHERSON

Although an HEU strike is not likely to
have a significant effect on essential service
staffing levels at hospitals already strike-
bound, it will “tighten things up a little,”
_ Said Smith. And unions are hoping it will
highlight the issue that ‘underlies the
unions’ dispute with HLRA — govern-
ment underfunding of health care.

“Band-aids won’t close the gaping
wound that the nursing shortage has
created in health care, “ Savage told nurses
Wednesday, adding that the nurses were

SAVAGE -

into health
Care,’ Socreds told

on strike “‘as much for our patients as for
ourselves.”

HSA president Jacquie Henwood said
the strike was “just a symptom of the crisis
... that involves the whole health care
system.”

But HLRA is doing nothing about it
while the provincial government “is taking
a business-as-usual approach,” she said. “I
call that disgraceful.”

-. Both Premier Vander Zalm and Health

~» Minister Peter Dueck have refused to talk
“about the government funding issue, des-

pite statistics showing British Columbia
ahead of only Quebec in the per patient
funding of hospitals. A B.C. Ministry of
Health study has also shown that the pro-
vince is short some 2,000 nurses.

The Social Credit cabinet has so far
declined any involvement in the dispute
— an indication of the strong public sup-

’ port behind the nurses, since any govern-

ment intervention at this stage would have
to give some recognition to their wage
demands. The B.C. Medical Association,
inaletter to Vander Zalm this week, called
on the premier to make more money
available for the nurses.

HLRA has made no moves towards
further talks after tabling its only offer
which fell far short of the BCNU position,
itself scaled down from the nurses’ open-
ing position. The employers’ group pro-
posed wage increases of 5.5, 6 and 6.5 per
cent in a three-year agreement.

The nurses are pressing for a first-year
increase of 20 per cent, followed by two
annual increases of seven per cent to offset
several years of public sector wage res-
traint.

Since the strike began, HLRA has put
its energies into public relations, insisting
that its wage offer would make nurses the
highest paid in Canada. It has also sought
to dramatize the issue of essential services
and the patients that are going without

“ee

Ea

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rally at Vancouver General Wednesday.

medical care.

Hospital administrations have also
sought to focus public attention on essen-
tial services. Vancouver General has
pressed to have more operating rooms
opened while Richmond General Hospital
closed its emergency ward despite nurses’
agreement to maintain essential services.

HLRA was also going to Supreme
Court Thursday over essential staffing
levels.

But if the problems of health care are to
be resolved in the long term, HLRA
should get back to the table and address
the contract issue, nurses declared Wed-
nesday.

“Eyery single day of this strike, we’ve
been threatened with court injunctions,
abused as lacking professionalism, accused
of not providing enough essential servi-
ces,” McPherson told the rally at VGH.

“I want to tell (HLRA administrator)
Dave Annis and (VGH president) Peter
Walton two words: butt out,” she declared
to a roar of applause.

“And I want to tefl this government: 11
there is to be any BS cut loose, then let’s
have the Budget Stabilization Fund cut
loose — and paid to the nurses.”

Throwing the issue back at the Socreds,

Led by BCNU president Pat Savage (centre), 3,000 health care workers march to

McPherson demanded: “When will this
government give HLRA permission to put
a new wage offer on the table — one that
will be good enough to bring us back to
work voluntarily and end the agony of a
strike in health care.”

Earlier, in an address to the Vancouver
and District Labour Council Tuesday,
McPherson challenged the notion, widely
emphasized in media reports, that nurses
are not living up to their public responsi-
bility because their strike is causing the
cancellation of surgery.

“Long before the strike surgery was
being cancelled every day because of the
nursing shortage,” she told council dele-
gates.

She said that on the heart ward at
VGH, where she works as a staff nurse,
the cancellations often came even as
patients were being prepared for surgery
— ‘because nurses are not available in
post-operative intensive care. :

“That will only get worse if the shortage
is not resolved,” she said. “And ending
our strike short of a good settlement won’t
be a long term answer.

“This is a do-or-die contract — we’ve
got to have a good settlement,” she said.

Union lobby dramatizes Tory sellout on fish

A day long debate in the House of Com-
mons Over the beleaguered fishing industry
in both British Columbia and Atlantic
Canada following a recent lobby effort was
one sign that the lobby was successful in
warning about the sell-out of the resource,
the United Fishermen and Allied Workers
Union says.

_ Union spokesperson Jim Sinclair said the
joint effort during five days of lobbying
beginning June 12 by UFA WU, the Cana-
dian Auto Workers and the Prince Rupert
Amalgamated Shoreworkers and Clerks
Union educated MPs who previously had
known nothing of the threat to shore-
workers’ jobs.

_ “We put the Tories on notice that this
industry was not going down without a
major fight, at great political cost to them,”
he said.

The joint lobby was initiated by the two
coastal fisheries to counter an estimated loss
of 1,000 jobs per year in the Atlantic and the
US. attack on a federal government
requirement that B.C. caught fish be landed

in Canada prior to sales to U.S. buyers.

That requirement, the latest retreat in the
face of U.S. attacks under the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
is a weak-kneed response, fishermen charge.
But the U.S. government, switching tactics,
has taken the issue to the disputes panel set
up under the Canada-U.S. Free Trade
Agreement.

A ruling is expected on Aug. 6.

On the east coast, overfishing by foreign

er 5

3

On
eee ARERR
socio «oven

FISHERMAN PHOTO — JIM SINCLAIR

‘CAW member Cindy Cotter (I), from Lockport, N.S. @..d Amalgamated Shore-

workers member Arne Nagy from Prince Rupert distribute leaflets outside Depart-
ment of Fisheries in Ottawa during union lobby.

fleets resulting in declining fish stocks,
coupled with the trucking of unprocessed
groundfish out of the country, has seen the
ongoing closure of several fish plants.

In a joint press conference in Ottawa
June 12, the leaders of three unions repres-
enting 30,000 Canadian shoreworkers
charged that the Conservative government
“has clearly bowed to U.S. pressure for
complete access to (B.C.’s) raw fish.”

“The lack of resolve by the federal
government to stem overfishing by foreign
fleets and ensure the proper conservation of
the resource will result in more layoffs and
closures in Atlantic Canada,” they said.

The union representatives — Jack Nichol
of the UFAWU, Wayne Boulanger of the
Prince Rupert union, and the CAW’s Buzz
Hargrove — tabled a four-point program
for rescuing the Canadian fishery.

It called for regulations to ensure that
“Canadian needs for fish are met before any
fish is allowed to leave the country unpro-

.cessed.” The union heads also demanded
steps to halt foreign fishing, increased funds
for conservation and protection of the
resource, and an immediate relief plan for
shoreworkers and fishermen.

The lobby, which also included B.C.’s
Native Brotherhood, rallied outside the Par-
liament Buildings June 12 and met with the
Pro-Canada Network, the budget protest
organized by the National Action Commit-
tee on the Status of Women, and protesters
from the Aboriginal First Nations.

The group addressed seven Ontario
labour councils, and sent delegations to
“bang on the doors of every MP,” Sinclair
related.

They held meetings with Fisheries Minis-
ter Tom Siddon, International Trade Minis-
ter John Crosbie and party caucuses.

Sinclair said the lobby put the question of
Canada’s fishery back on the agenda, and
forged strong links between east coast and
west coast fishing workers.

During the day long debate in the House
on June 15, NDP MP John Rodriguez
(Sudbury-Nickel Belt) warned that failure
to protect the fishery will have ramifications
for all of Canada’s resources.

“What are the implications, for example,
of finishing nickel in this country. ..and a
host of other resources. This will condemn
us to forever being hewers of wood and
drawers of water,” he charged.

Pacific Tribune, June 26, 1989 e 3