The following article appeared in the July/August 2009 issue of The Report.

by DAN KEETON

In 1994, the organizing model of trade unionism was adopted at three facilities. The name refers to a system developed by the American Federation of Labour in 1988, replacing the “top down” style of unionism whereby stewards and labour relations officers assist members, to one in which members themselves solve many of the problems of the workplace. By 2000, members at nine facilities were trained in the advocacy and facilitation techniques required for the organizing model.

As the decade closed, HSA’s activism encompassed broadening areas of concern. The union was an observer in the massive protest in Seattle during a meeting of the World Trade Organization on November 30. In her president’s report in the November-December 1999 issue of The Report, Cindy Stewart wrote: “The mounting concern, rising to a level that brought thousands of people into the streets around the world on the opening day of the WTO talks, is indicative of the fear that people have about increasing globalization, unfettered market practices, and the implications for democracy, the environment and human rights.”

Having chafed under government restraint in the latter 1990s, members were seeking substantial wage gains in 2001. Frustrated by the employer’s refusal to engage in meaningful talks, HSA members launched a series of “rolling strikes” between May and June that garnered national media attention and highlighted the various roles and critical importance of HSA professions.

The newly-elected provincial Liberal government legislated a cooling-off period in the dispute between the Paramedical Professionals Bargaining Association and the Health Employers Association. After weeks of stonewalling from HEABC, members’ frustration again boiled over – this time into defiance of Bill 2, the back-to-work legislation. They walked out July 23 for two days of job action that ended after the government petitioned the BC Supreme Court to find the health science professionals in contempt of a Labour Relations Board order prohibiting strike action.

Members protest two-tiered wage proposal
What particularly galled HSA members was HEABC’s two-tiered wage proposal. Yet that was what the government imposed on August 7. “After that job action, we – through our national union and the Canadian Labour Congress – brought a complaint to the International Labour Organization [under the United Nations]. They investigated and sanctioned the Liberal government. It wasn’t enforceable, but certainly it recommended change,” Johnson recalled.

“That was really pioneering for HSA in that this ILO sanction created an international stir and brought attention to this Liberal government. In many ways we’d matured as an organization when our executive met and ratified an illegal job action – and by the second day even more members were off the job. Our members are passionate about their jobs and their patients. They are slow to anger, but the employers and the government managed to force us to take a stand. Our willingness to stand up to them showed we’d come of age in some way. It was a proud moment in HSA’s history and another benchmark for us.

“After that, we negotiated a basic rollover contract in 2004,” Johnson relates. “We did get some basic contract language improvements that we wanted.” In 2006 the government settled a four-year agreement with several public sector unions to cover the period through the 2010 Winter Olympics. “We won a lot of really good things in that collective agreement. We got some reasonable wage increases but also they started to fix the wage split between our members, at our insistence.” Additionally, HSA joined the employer’s LTD plan and achieved “decent wage increases.”

With yet another lesson about political action under its belt, HSA moved forward in 2003, with the development of a constituency liaison program that assigned individual members to develop relationships, share information, and lobby government and opposition MLAs. “Our members weren’t used to doing that,” said Johnson. “But we’ve seen the benefit in that individual MLAs are more educated about who we are and what we do.”

Increasing political activism
Involvement in the political process as an important tool in educating decision makers continued. The July-August 2004 issue of The Report cites HSA board discussions regarding the union’s expanding role in political activism. HSA endorsed the BC Federation of Labour’s campaign of member-to-member contact, subsequently entitled “Count Me In.” The board reported on the expanded membership of the union’s political action committee and endorsed a senior citizens’ campaign to defend medicare. A political action fund was announced in 2005 offering financial support to HSA members running in municipal elections.

In 2004, HSA joined with the BC Federation of Labour in a campaign against four years of cutbacks to benefits and occupational health and safety regulations of the Workers’ Compensation Board (now WorkSafe BC). That year, 134 workers died from injuries and illnesses caused at work. The campaign aimed to educate communities about the effects of the cutbacks.

Members continued to reach out into wider spheres of activism. In 2006, the year HSA celebrated its 35th anniversary, The Report carried an article from HSA activists Thalia Vesterback and Rachel Tutte urging members attend the upcoming World Peace Forum in Vancouver. “Acting with community support, cities and local authorities can effectively contest global militarism and curtail ballooning military budgets that starve local and regional governments of the resources necessary to provide quality housing, health, education, and community services,” they wrote.

“It’s been interesting to watch as our activists have seen the benefit of becoming more political,” Johnson observes. He credits HSA’s affiliation with the BC Federation of Labour, and the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) and through it to the Canadian Labour Congress for greatly increasing the union’s scope. “Through that we have influence on what our country does nationally and internationally. Also NUPGE belongs to Public Services International, and through that we have awareness and input into how public services are delivered and how public services unions are operating around the world.”

Supreme Court rules Bill 29 unconstitutional
In 2002 the BC Liberal government imposed the notorious Bill 29, under which the government tore up existing contracts with health unions and handed large sections of public health care services to private corporations. Health care unions launched a challenge that made its way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled several sections of Bill 29 unconstitutional. “Late in 2007, we started negotiations with the provincial government for compensation. By January of 2008 we had an agreement,” says Johnson.

Unions in the Health Sciences Bargaining Association – formerly the Paramedical Professionals Bargaining Association – negotiated a $3-million settlement. “This was significant in that we achieved compensation for professionals whose jobs were contracted out and also funding to encourage professional development,” said Maureen Headley, HSA’s executive director of legal services and labour relations.

“Through this process, we achieved expedited arbitration of classification grievances. Processing these grievances has been tremendously tedious, and we had been frustrated for many years by slowness of the process. We also got semi-annual direct consultation with each of the health authorities. It’s a significant benefit not only to our members but to the health sector in that we are part of the solution – and we want our abilities to be called upon,” Headley said.

Continued victories for HSA members
She says the union has achieved compensation and benefits that have “set the golden standard. We’ve had some significant victories that ensure people are paid appropriate to the grade. It’s very complex and sophisticated and it’s not a perfect system but we have a large and growing department that deals with these issues on a day-to-day basis.

“This has been developed over the past 30 years and it’s been streamlined somewhat.

We’ve lost some ground in compensation to Alberta in recent years, but if you compare our provincial agreement to those across most of the country, you’ll find we stack up pretty well. We’ve managed to retain a classification system that’s an enviable system for a lot of other organizations, and we have a dispute resolutions system that the employers have tried to simplify, but not simplify in a way that makes sense to us. We’ve held on tight. It’s not a perfect system but it’s turned out to be pretty valuable for our members.”

Protecting and enhancing public care
HSA members have also brought value to an increasingly complex debate on health care in the province.

In 2006, the provincial government launched its Conversation on Health, a series of public meetings around the province. Well-known for its sympathies to privatizing health care – the opening session featured an address from outspoken private medicine advocate Dr. Brian Day – health policy experts suspected the government was hoping its privatization plans would get public support. Yet the overwhelming message it received was that British Columbians liked their public system, and would protect it, while suggesting innovative improvements. Helping bring that message to the meetings were activists in HSA.

They, along with other unions and health care advocates, demonstrated outside the forums and gave presentations. Some 12,000 submissions later, the government’s report acknowledged that the “vast majority” of British Columbians want health care to remain public but still indicated it would implement “reforms” to the system. “It is up to each and every one of us to continue to work to ensure that government’s actions reflect the commitment to a public system so strongly and consistently expressed during the Conversation on Health,” Johnson wrote in his column in The Report.

“The Liberals misread the public,” Johnson asserts. “When the public learned what privatization had done in other jurisdictions, they said, ‘That’s not what we want!’ and that came through loud and clear.”

Broadening and strengthening ties
In 2007 former HSA president Cindy Stewart ended 14 years of leadership with an announcement that she wouldn’t seek re-election. In her regular column, she reflected on the growth of HSA’s activism. “The evolution of member involvement and activity can be tracked through the decade, including the high profile showdown during the 2001 job action. It was a time that members needed to step forward in their communities and speak about the importance of the work you do.

“It is a genie that we will never put back in the bottle and marked yet another turning point for our union.”

Reid Johnson was elected to the position at the 36th annual convention in 2007. A five-term regional director, and former secretary-treasurer of the union, Johnson said a key priority for the union should be to fight the labour shortage in the health professions through increased funding for training. In his first column, he praised HSA’s growing activism and its participation in broader organizations such as the BC Health Coalition.

“We’re a medium-sized union, 16,000 plus,” Johnson notes. “Our voice is somewhat limited so we’ve been amplifying it through partners like the BC Health Coalition. We have staff and members who sit on their committees. We also sit on the board of the BC office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. We chose to do that; we wanted to build our influence through the kind of research and campaigns the CCPA operates under.”

Building strategies to protect care
What does the future hold? In 2010 HSA returns to the bargaining table in a post-Olympic era and an anticipated continued economic downturn. “Given the current economic climate, collective bargaining is a challenge,” Johnson admits. While that may put a downward pressure on wages and benefits, but there’s also an urgent need for training and recruitment of health care and community social service professionals.

“The increase in vacancy rates for a number of our disciplines is growing. We have said that to address the shortage of health science professionals that the government has to have same political will that put higher levels of funding towards training for nurses and doctors.”

“We used to be able to recruit from across the country for people to come to BC to work.” But higher wages in other provinces and the well-known long hours leading to burnout are turning potential recruits off, says Johnson. “If you don’t pay people for their expertise, qualifications, and the responsibility, then you’re not going to attract the people to do the job.”

Johnson worries about the government’s recent move to add “sustainability” as a sixth principle to the five established for Canada’s public health care. “By that you might as well read ‘cap on public spending’. The rest you’re going to pay for privately and the private providers are rubbing their hands.

“We are going to continue to be a voice in that debate and we’ll continue to amplify our voice through other organizations.”