Health Sciences Association job action option

AFTER NEARLY a year of
failed bargaining, paramedicat
and clerieal staff at North
Shore Health have voted in
favor of strike action.

By fan Noble
News Reporter

Ifa strike occurs, the services of
40 paramedicals delivered to com-
munity members in their homes will
cease, said Colleen Fuller, the
Health Sciences Assuciation of B.C
(HSA) communications director.

The paramedical staff includes
psychologists, physiotherapists and
speech pathologists.

Fuller said employees, who are
members of HSA, are prepared to
exercise that strike option “if there
are no other options.”

Fuller said the union's last agree-
ment expired in December 1993.

Almost a year of bargaining has
failed to produce a collective agree-
ment.

The union is in a Jegal strike
position,

No further bargaining dates have
been set, stated an HSA press
release dated Nov. 17.

Fuller said paramedical union
members are secking wage parity
with paramedicals working in Lions
Gate Hospital (LGH).

The LGH workers are earning
10% more.

Fuller added the 40 clerical staff,
who now get three weeks of holiday
annually, are seeking the same four-
week holiday benefits paramedicals
receive at North Shore Health,

North Shore Health director
Brian O’Connor said salaries of
unionized workers at North Shore
Health range from $463 per week
for clerical staff to $962.50 per
week for professional staff.

He added the prospect of a strike
is not pleasant. Job action will affect
hundreds of patients who receive
care each month from North Shore
Health staff.

“The community suffers as well
as the relationship at work. So we
don’t like to see that.”

Greater Vancouver Regional
District labor relations manager
Mark Leffler told the News that
negotiations between the GVRD
and the union are on hold pending

. the results of negotiations between
the Canadian Union of Public
Employees (CUPE) with other
municipalities in the region.

He says the North Shore Heaith
workers’ bargaining unit represents
a number of jobs similar to posi-
tions represented by CUPE in other
municipalities.

Fuller said the HSA is “not
happy" that the GVRD is waiting
unui] CUPE contracts ure setded,
although Leffler said contract talks
between the HSA and the GVRD
were adjourned by “mutual agree-
ment” between the parties.

Fuller pointed out that the care
given by North Shore Health work-
ers is in line with the provincial

ANN
MARIE
SWEENEY

B.A. M.S.W., L.L.B.
BARRISTER & SOLICITOR

922-0131

government's
ideal.

She said health-care jobs will
therefore go to workers such as the
union's members.

“We are quite determined that
when jobs are shifted to the commu-
nity sector that members are rot
sacrificing wages in this new vision
ofa health-care system.”

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