Don't get sick or injured next weekend. If you do, there may not be an ambulance or paramedic around to assist you.
That's the troubling and alarming news in the ongoing B.C. paramedics' strike. Local paramedics are concerned that due to understaffing and scheduling challenges, the Coast's fleet of ambulances will drop from six to two for the weekend of Aug. 28 to 30.
Several paramedics from Sechelt and Gibsons talked to us this week about their frustration over the situation. The scheduling gaps have been attributed to a number of factors, including injured colleagues, burned-out staff who have been working extreme hours since the strike started April 1, and the lack of financial incentive for paramedics to stay on the job, rather than taking a day off with the staggering low wage of $10 per hour for stand-by shifts.
These factors are the main issues that paramedics went on strike to deal with in the first place - wage disparity, working conditions and understaffing due to the ever-growing problems in recruitment and staff retention.
Paramedics in the Lower Mainland and here on the Sunshine Coast are in a constant struggle to maintain a reliable service. They are faced with a growing population and, in the case of the Coast, an aging population. Call volumes continue to increase and the rural stations here on the Coast are having a tough time staffing those stations. It's becoming more and more difficult to attract, let alone keep, existing staff with the high cost of paramedic training and low wages - $2 per hour pager pay is simply not competitive enough.
Two facilitators, Barry O'Neill for CUPE and Stephen Brown, associate deputy minister of health services, were appointed in May to try to help hammer out a deal, but several days of talks went nowhere. And since then, nothing.
The provincial government seems to have forgotten about the strike. Health Minister Kevin Falcon is on holidays and doesn't appear ready to get the sides back to the bargaining table to negotiate. Why is that? Do paramedics not matter?
God forbid if a major accident or disaster strikes next weekend and there are not enough paramedics to help the sick or injured. Does someone have to die because of lack of ambulance care for the government to take notice? We'd like to think that isn't the case.
This strike has gone on long enough. Patient care is lacking and it's not the paramedics' fault. No, it's the failure of the government to negotiate a new deal.
