The Joint Community Social Services Labour Adjustment & Education Fund is now accepting applications from members working in the community social services sector.   Successful applicants may receive up to $5,000 (lifetime maximum) to take eligible courses.

The labour adjustment and education funds are available through a grant from the provincial government resulting from a joint request made by the Community Social Services Bargaining Association and the Community Social Services Employers Association, during the negotiation of the 2010 ... 2012 collective agreement.

The federal government is turning its back on health care at a time when we need our elected leaders to help build a caring future for Canada. The current federal-provincial-territorial agreement on health care will end in 2014 and the federal government has walked away from the negotiating table with the provinces before negotiations have even started.

Late Monday evening, the BCGEU will commence a one-day job action at BC Liquor distribution centres in Vancouver, Victoria and Kamloops.

HSA members are encouraged to join the BCGEU members at each of the three locations throughout the action, but primarily from 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 3, 2012 until the action is over at the end of the day.  Please bring banners and signs that show your support.

Location details are as follows:

Q: Im scheduled to work July 1, and not on July 2. However, my employer says that I will not be getting paid at the -statutory holiday" rate for work on July 1. Is this right?

A: This year, July 1 falls on a Sunday. According to the federal Holidays Act, this means the legal statutory holiday is July 2. For 2012, members working July 2 will receive stat pay ... not those working July 1.

Negotiations aimed at concluding a new contract covering 16,000 health care and administrative workers in the Community Health Services and Support sub-sector continued last week in Vancouver. Talks will continue.

On Monday and again on Wednesday last week, the Health Employers Association of British Columbia (HEABC) presented a broad based benefits proposal.  The Community Bargaining Association (CBA) is reviewing the proposals and we will provide you with the details when the bargaining committee has been able to get clarity.

Health care professionals across the country will be staging a National Day of Action for Refugee Health Care on Monday, June 18 to protest the Conservative government's cuts to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP).

National organizations representing several health professions, including the Canadian Association of Social Workers and the Canadian Pharmacists Association, are organizing events to protest these drastic cuts, scheduled to take effect on June 30th.

HSA members are encouraged to attend the Vancouver event as follows:

HSAs younger workers are a crucial and dynamic part of our union. In recent years, weve identified shifting attitudes, needs, and ideas from these members.

For a better understanding of these needs and to develop a strategy for more effectively engaging and mobilizing younger workers, HSA is invites your participation in a collaborative project. To inform future HSA services and programs, we want you ... our younger workers ... to help us identify what the goals, strategies, and activities of our young worker engagement program should be.

Talks broke down yesterday between the provincial government, employers and the ten unions representing BC's 15,000 community social services workers. As a result, there will be a strike vote for all unionized workers in the sector.

Outstanding issues include: wages, benefits, sick leave, reimbursable expenses and concessionary demands by the employer, including revisiting improvements gained in the last round of bargaining. 

The Report: June 2012 vol.33 num.2

NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADER ADRIAN DIX told HSA delegates his party is committed to building a stronger provincial health care system in order to build prosperity in British Columbia.

-We have to respond to the challenges of the public health care system in the 21st century thats under attack from Ottawa and under attack from private interest and this current government in our province," said Dix to a ballroom of several hundred HSA delegates from across B.C.