What started as a strike of staff deemed non-essential at St. Mary's Hospital ended up as a political protest late last week.
Striking members were legislated back to work by Labour Minister Graham Bruce on Wednesday, who said the legislation was enforced to "protect patient care by ending the labour dispute impacting hospitals and requiring employees to immediately return to work."
But picket lines stood strong outside St. Mary's Hospital Thursday.
Health Employee's Union (HEU) representative Pam Duffy said, "We're not going away. We're standing our ground for health care."
She explained those workers on the pickets lines had been deemed "non-essential" and included workers from food services who were laid off last week, laundry staff and material management workers.
She said the strike that turned protest was not seriously impacting the local hospital, as minimum staffing levels were being protected.
She had hoped the original strike would force employers back to the bargaining table and stop the contracting out of services. She was discouraged when she heard the legislation passed to force workers back to work and into a collective agreement not approved by the HEU. The agreement sees health workers go to a 37.5-hour workweek from a 36-hour workweek, resulting in a total savings of 15 per cent to the government. The contract also shows no intent to stop contracting out health services.
She said that although the legislation made strike action illegal, a political protest of workers was allowable.
"We intend to stay out here until our head office tells us we have to go back to work," she said.
Other union members on the Coast have decided to join the protest in support of HEU members. Local CUPE members at schools in Pender Harbour, Sechelt and Gibsons are planning action Monday, May 3.
"We have been planning some kind of action for quite some time, but the unfair treatment of HEU workers has been the trigger," said CUPE president Alice Lutes.
Approximately 170 CUPE members plan to protest outside their respective schools from 8 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. Monday, then meet at Hackett Park and march to MLA Harold Long's office before joining picket lines at St. Mary's Hospital in the afternoon.
Lutes says the action won't impact students, and classes will continue as scheduled that day.
Local members of the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) also plan to show their support by manning picket lines with HEU members this weekend and next week.
And B.C. Ferries staff also plan to show their support by walking picket lines with hospital workers, although that action will not affect B.C. Ferries service, said Dan Rowe, media contact for the B.C. Ferries union.
HEU picketers have also been getting a great amount of support from businesses, said Duffy, who noted local businesses have made financial donations to the cause and donated food, sunscreen and hats to striking staff.
Although the majority of feedback has been supportive, one incident caused Duffy to call police this week.
"We had one guy drive by with a business name on his truck, so we don't know if he was the owner or a worker for the company, but he drove by about six times yelling at us and being very verbally abusive," said Duffy.
Workers contacted the police after the third time the truck drove by and were told to phone 911 with the licence plate number of the vehicle if it happened again.
"We did that, and unfortunately I haven't been able to follow up with police as to what happened with that situation yet," said Duffy.
Hospital workers like Kelly Douglas want the public to fully understand what local health workers have to endure in a normal work week and thinks the details of their job description may cause nay-sayers of strike action to change their minds.
She has worked as a care attendant since 1996 and says her job entails being directly exposed to highly contagious diseases daily, having to "come in direct contact with fecal and urinary incontinence (often vomitus) at point blank range with 90 per cent or more" of patients daily, hand-cleaning heavily soiled fecal perineal cloths before sending them to industrial laundry and handling "some aspects of hands-on post mortem care."
She also notes care attendants are subject to verbal and physical abuse by patients who have dementia or other mental health problems.
Duffy says these types of incidents are common and are being compounded by longer work weeks, less staff and constant retraining of contracted-out staff, imposed by the current government.
"One interesting statistic is that housekeeping originally hired 12 workers for St. Mary's Hospital, and they have had to re-hire six new employees in less than five months. That's a 50 per cent turnover of staff. The remaining staff are already overworked and have the added pressure of having to retrain all these new people," said Duffy.
The Health Employers Association of B.C. and union leadership have been in contract negotiations with the government for over a year. No common ground has been reached. That is why Bruce said the legislation enforcing an agreement was necessary. "We clearly have to intervene to end this dispute for the sake of patients," said Bruce.
The next step the HEU may take is to ask for a new arbitrator within the next 14 days. If they decide to do that, the new arbitrator will have 60 days to work with the parties to reach a new agreement or to arbitrate a settlement.
