A Sunshine Coast paramedic who was one of the organizers of a petition to get paramedics included in the Fire and Police Services Collective Bargaining Act is welcoming an announcement by the Health Minister.
Adrian Dix said Oct. 24 that the NDP government will create a standalone bargaining unit for the Ambulance Paramedics of British Columbia, CUPE Local 873, which represents the more than 3,600 paramedics and dispatchers.
Cole Godfrey told Coast Reporter this week that a standalone bargaining unit is a move in the right direction, even though it falls short of the goal of the petition, conducted under the Recall and Initiative Act, which would have seen paramedics treated as an essential emergency service in collective bargaining.
That would mean they’d lose the right to strike, but they also couldn’t be locked out, and if contract talks break down they would go directly to binding arbitration.
The petition got strong support in Powell River-Sunshine Coast, but didn’t get enough signatures province-wide to go forward.
“It’s good news,” said Godfrey, who added that the petition created a lot of public awareness and led to government action on a few of their concerns. “The government’s been pretty proactive since the petition.”
Green leader Andrew Weaver also welcomed the Dix announcement and said he’s putting a hold on his plan to reintroduce a private member’s bill on paramedic collective bargaining.
Godfrey said the end goal for many of the paramedics involved in the initiative petition, however, is still to get the emergency services designation. “That would be the next thing… That would give us our own bargaining unit and it would give us binding arbitration.”
B.C. paramedics walked out in 2009 before being legislated back to work, and many of the issues that sparked that job action led to the initiative petition.
