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August 26, 2005
BCNU supports Sodexho workers' fight for fair contract
BCNU strongly supports the efforts of 1,100 Sodexho workers, who are members of HEU, in their continuing fight for a decent contract.
The workers have been in bargaining since March for a deal that would bring them above the poverty-level wages and minimal benefits currently paid by the French-based multinational corporation. In June they gave the HEU a strike mandate which the union has not yet exercised.
Almost 90 per cent of the workers earn $10.15 an hour while enduring dangerously high workloads. Their low compensation and poor working conditions create high levels of staff turnover, which has contributed to deterioration in the quality of support services in BC health care facilities. It has also led to deterioration in working conditions for nurses and other health care providers.
Affected are dietary workers at Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, and cleaning staff at MSA, Eagle Ridge and Mission Memorial Hospitals, as well as support services at German-Canadian, Foyer Maillard and Rosewood care homes in the Lower Mainland and Central Care Home in Victoria.
HEU is in earlier stages of bargaining for other groups of privatized support workers.
Support service jobs were contracted out by health authorities under the privatization policies of the BC Liberal government. As a result, the wages of BC health care support workers are among the lowest for hospital workers in Canada. They have no health benefits, sick benefits or pension plan.
Their current contracts were negotiated in backroom deals between the multinationals and a controversial local of the former IWA (now United Steelworkers of America) The USWA recently placed the local under trusteeship, alleging financial irregularities. HEU has successfully organized most of the workers, over the objections of the corporations and the IWA.
BCNU fully supports HEU in trying to bring justice for these workers, who provide critical services for patients in our public health care system.
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