July 3rd, 2003
We are currently involved in preparations for several legal battles with the Labour Relations Board and the Supreme Court in order to defend our membership against many of the negative changes that are being pushed by this government. We are hopeful for success in these issues. However, we also feel that by putting this type of pressure on the employers and the government, we may place ourselves in a better position to be able to negotiate ways of easing transitions for the membership and even turn some of these changes into positive processes. The cases we are currently involved in are Bill 29 - Charter Challenge; LRB Case Dealing with the Successorship Status of PHSA; and a Successorship Application in Kamloops and Prince George.
We had our two-day training course in early June. It was fully attended with 18 people each day. We had to turn some people down who were hoping to sign up. Based on the turn out, we are hoping to do more in the fall. The educational content was good but general. We are hoping to develop some of our own training packages that would be more specific to what our Steward's need to deal with.
We also plan to develop various specialty courses that would be aimed at our more seasoned Stewards and would provide them with training on such issues as Duty to Accommodate, Human Rights, Negotiations, and Discipline and Discharge.
The past month has seen an increase in the number of grievances and we are expecting at least two more in the near future. We have now started listing the Industry-wide issues on the log as this will enable us to be more aware of what the issues are and also keep track on their progress. They can be found on the UPN Web-site.
We have begun looking at the surveys that were sent out a while a go in order to get a picture on where our members feel we should be focusing in the upcoming Health Sector negotiations. Of the items listed as priorities job security has come up as the number one area of concern. Wages were also listed high but, in reading the comments that came with the surveys, the membership is more concerned with maintaining their wages as opposed to increasing them.
We were recently at a Stakeholders meeting at Riverview Hospital. This meeting was put on by Riverview Hospital and was also attended by representatives of all of the Health Authorities and the Minister of State for Mental Health, Gulzar Cheema. Each of the Health Authorities gave an update on how the transitions were going forward to date and we were provided with the latest information on the process.
We have now dedicated a section on the WEB page to this process and we have copied all of the handouts that were available at the meeting including the question and answer sheet that was provided in response to the many questions that had been submitted prior to the meeting.
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