December 21, 2002
On December 12th the Provincial Government announced its' plans for restructuring health delivery. Under the new structure there will be five geographic Health Authorities and one Provincial Health Services Authority. Within the health authorities there will be 15 distinct Health Service Delivery Areas that will reside in the five health geographic authorities. This will replace the current 11 regional health boards, 34 community health councils and seven community health services societies.
The five new geographic health authorities will serve the following areas:
The new board chairs have been appointed. All have a business background - none have health backgrounds. The full boards will be appointed over the next two or three months.
The majority of UPN members will be in the Fraser and Vancouver Coastal health authorities.
There has been no announcement on when all the changes are to take effect. At the present time we are still dealing with the same managers and same human resources offices as before. From speaking with HEABC, we understand there should be no noticeable changes impacting the day to day work life of members.
UPN will continue to represent our members under the new structure. We have consulted with HSA on what steps we may have to take to change our certifications to reflect the new employer structure. We assume, but can not be certain, that HEABC will identify the new employer set up and will apply for variances in the certifications.
The sixth governing body is the Provincial Health Services Authority, responsible for provincial programs and highly specialized services. These are:
The Provincial Health Services Authority Board Chair is Wynne Powell. Powell is President and CEO of London Drugs, and is an executive and/or board member of numerous other businesses including London Air Services, TLD Computers Inc., BC Bearings Engineering, and IGA Canada. The Riverview community board was fired on December 12th.
The Government did not state whether the facilities in this Board will be a mix of Public Service and health sector (HEABC) or all health sector. And if Riverview and FPH are to be transferred to the health sector, when is the transfer to take place? Will there be time to negotiate transfer agreements? And which collective agreement will the employees be under on January 1st, and for how long? Attempts have been made right from December l2th to find answers, but as of December 20, PSERC still has not been advised. Riverview and FPH management have been kept in the dark as well and have not been told if they and their employees will still be in the Public Service on January 1st or not. The Ministry of Health is not returning calls. We have also been in touch with BCGEU.
We've received information from the BCGEU as this report was about to be posted that the Provincial Government has again declined to authorize the funding necessary to transfer Riverview and FPH to the health sector. BCGEU has confirmed that the information is correct. Riverview and FPH are expected to remain in the Public Service for the time being, and so the sixth health authority will be a mix of health sector and Public Service.
Public Service Nurses' negotiations are on hold, in part because of the formation of the Provincial Health Services Authority, in part because of the Government's cost cutting, and in part because the Government's negotiator just got up and left town without telling anybody in advance.
The last round of negotiations was held November 13th and 14tho Things went well, and several more issues were resolved. The main outstanding issue is wages, and the parties were to meet again before Christmas. What happened after that is uncertain. The Government negotiator would not return phone calls to the Union, and had not even told his own committee anything. Even the PSERC assistant was in the dark, and only found out that negotiations were not going to resume when the Government negotiator left town until the new year. Mind you, this rather strange behavior on the part of the Government's negotiator is not new. He did the same thing at negotiations at Christmas two years ago - refused to return phone calls and just disappeared. We will track him down in the new year.
The Provincial Government introduced an Early Retirement Incentive Plan the beginning of December. The Plan offered inducements to older workers to take early retirement, as a way of assisting to cut the Public Service by 7000+ positions over the next three years.
There are no plans to include nurses in the Early Retirement Program. To be eligible, an employee must occupy a position that is declared redundant or create a vacancy for placement of a surplus employee. Given that there are approximately 100 nursing vacancies in the Public Service, PSERC suggests that the possibility of the program being offered to our members is more than remote.
The BC Press Council upheld in part a complaint brought by UPN against the Vancouver Sun for an article on April l4th alleging wide spread physical and sexual abuses having occurred at the now closed Woodlands. Considering the hearing was a farce, we were probably fortunate we did as well as we did.
The Council found the Sun was wrong in that in a follow up editorial, the paper did elevate allegation to fact. The Sun suggested alleged events actually occurred, when as yet they were unproven allegations. The Council also found fault that the Sun breached the Code of Practice by failing to give the opportunity for a timely reply to the original article. Additionally, the Council found that the Sun had made an incorrect reference to a judge's written disposition, in an attempt to give authenticity to its article. The Council also ruled that two of the main headlines, "B.C. launches investigation into Woodlands abuse" was misleading, and the headline "Abusers Never Prosecuted" was false.
The Council found the Sun had printed a lurid story based primarily on allegations, unproven, and that it was important that an answering or challenging voice was also presented. It said that in this case, the Sun had made no effort to find those in positions of authority who could answer the allegations. The Press Council did not find in our favor on UPN's main complaint, a truly bizarre ruling.
The Sun quoted a Summer relief aid from 20 years ago who stated that she new of 20 residents who had their teeth pulled because they were biters. They also quoted another former aide who stated that after a detox was opened on the same property, six Woodlands residents had been assaulted and had given birth. The Union produced evidence to show that management had no record of the teeth pulling, nor of the alleged births, and three head nurses with a combination of close to 90 years service said they had no knowledge of either. The Press Council found that it cannot be concluded that the alleged events did not occur simply because the union or its members did not have knowledge of them.
Since the Press Council is a voluntary self regulating body established by B.C.'s newspapers, they are not required to meet the standards of either reasonable proof nor natural justice. There is no appeal.
UPN is filing the failure of HEABC member employers to properly pay UPN member supervisors and geriatric outreach nurses, to arbitration.
We had reported previously that the Union had referred HEABC's failure to deal with the reclassifications of the UPN supervisors and geriatric outreach nurses to legal counsel. As a result, the Union filed a general application dispute on November 8th. HEABC denied the dispute, but agreed to a meeting, which was held December 5th. The meeting appeared productive, and HEABC committed to put a new position in writing. The supposedly new position, dated and received December 19th, turned out to be the same old position. The Union will be referring the matter to arbitration.
The issue of the correct classification for the supervisors and geriatric outreach nurses has been resolved for the most part, and HEABC has agreed in writing to the new classifications. But HEABC claims they still can't pay them above the Level 1 classification.
UPN's dispute is in two parts. First, the Union claims that these two groups must be paid correctly under the terms of the new agreement from the date the new agreement was legislated. HEABC says there is no funding. On this issue, we believe we are in a very strong position.
For the second part, UPN claims that these two groups should also be paid retroactively to the date they were covered under the agreement. HEABC says there is no requirement to do so because there is no funding. (HEABC promised 18 months ago to apply to the Ministry of Health for funding, but has failed to do so.) On this second point, we are in an extremely weak position, which is why we didn't refer it to arbitration months ago.
For pensions that commence on or after April 1, 2002, where the member was an active contributor during March 2002 or after, the normal form on pension will be a single life pension, guaranteed 10 years. This means that you can now receive the 10 year guarantee without having your lifetime pension payments reduced to pay for the guarantee period. This is a 1.2% to 4% improvement to your pension.
We had printed in the last UPN Bulletin that the position of forensic liaison nurse may be negatively impacted by Provincial Government budget cuts. In tracking down the rumor to determine whether Article 13 applied, the Union was informed, by both Forensic Services and PSERC, that there had been no thought given to eliminating that position. It was also determined that there are no changes contemplated for the forensic case managers as well.
Workers at Purdy's Chocolates have returned to work pending a new certification vote ordered by the Labour Relations Board.
The Forensic Psychiatric Hospital has had a second look at the new pay system they hope t introduce in the new year, and will continue with pay leveling. Under the original plan, employee were to be paid by the hour for actual hours worked. This would have resulted in wide variances in biweekly pay for 4-2 shift workers.