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November 19, 1998
HEABC claims and the NBA facts
Nurses are extremely disappointed that the Health Employers' Association of BC is resorting to the use of misleading information and misrepresentations of fact in its effort to attack nurses' legitimate issues and justify its refusal to discuss them.
HEABC should not be surprised at nurses refusal to withdraw their workload and equality demands. These proposals have been on the bargaining table since we began negotiations in March this year.
0%, 0%, 2% Wage Guidelines
HEABC Claims: that nurses are trying to break the provincial government's wage guidelines, when all other public sector workers have accepted 0%,0%,2% over three years. (Gary Moser to the news media November 16, 1998)
Facts: Other public sector unions have already broken the guidelines when it comes to compensation and workload issues. Like nurses, they accepted the government's guidelines for wage increases of zero, zero and two per cent, but they received workload relief and increases in their compensation in other ways.
Members of the HEU, BCGEU, the Operating Engineers and the other unions in the facilities sub-sector got pay equity increases of 1%,1% and 1% - bringing their total raises to 1%, 1% and 3%.
Direct government employees in the BCGEU got a 1% increase for 20 months of their contract in the form of a pension premium holiday.
And B.C. teachers received $150m for workload improvements which translated into more than 1200 full time equivalent teachers in kindergarten to grade three classrooms.
Eligible rural doctors got a new premium for being on-call of $20 to $40 an hour, a benefit never before paid in BC.
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On Call and In Charge
HEABC Claims: That nurses' demands are unreasonable because they "want a 400% increase in on call premiums ......and a 230% increase in the premium they receive for responsibility pay." - HEABC news release November 16, 1998)
Fact: HEABC can make grand claims that nurses are asking for a 400 % increase in on-call premiums. But when the on-call premium is only $1per hour, a 400% increase comes to only $5 per hour compared with the doctors' on-call pay of $20-$40 per hour. Similarly, a 230% increase in the in-charge premium takes the pay for a nurse who is an acting supervisor, from 90 cents per hour to $3 per hour.
Fact: Improvements in On Call and In Charge premiums are an integral part of our workload issues. When employers decreased full time regular positions over the last five years, they increased the use of nurses on call for $1 per hour. In the same period when employers eliminated Head Nurse (ward supervisor) positions, they loaded supervisory duties onto bedside nurses increasing their workload by making them In Charge for only 90 cents per hour.
Fact: The cost of the on-call premium to cover the 300 eligible rural doctors is $5 million a year. The cost of meeting the nurses' on-call proposal, which would cover all nurses who work on-call across the province, would cost only $4.6 million.
Car Allowance
HEABC Claims: "Nurses want the taxpayers of this province to provide them with $44 million worth of cars when they already receive the highest mileage rates in the public sector"
Fact: We are asking for fair treatment for community nurses who lost $100 or more per month this summer, when their portal-to-portal car allowance was taken away. They lost portal to portal even though all the other health care workers who transferred from the public service, health inspectors and members of the BCGEU, CUPE, HSA and the Union of Psychiatric Nurses have been allowed to keep this portal to portal car allowance.
Fact: Nurses receive the lowest rate of car allowance in the health sector, and much lower car allowance provisions than government employees.
Workload
HEABC Claims: Nurses rejected an offer of $45 million that would have put 600 more nurses into they system.
Fact: HEABC offered nurses $30m in new money which would create 502 full time equivalent positions. This is half the full time equivalent nursing positions which were cut in 1993-1995 and less than half the number of positions that teachers won in their contract.
More nursing positions are needed to solve the quality patient care problems in long term care and the community and acute care nurses need the right to call in extra staff when there is an emergency or patient care levels are threatened.
What should HEABC do?
Instead of inflating the cost of nurses bargaining proposals, the health care system would be better served by health employers sitting down and working out cost effective solutions to reduce overtime, and the number of casual employees, and number of employees on call and in charge.
For nurses to ratify a new contract, the settlement has to be fair and deal with all of their the concerns of nurses from long term care, the community and acute care hospitals.
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