CKNW Editorial
for August 9, 2001

What the Liberals are doing with the Nurses and the Health Sciences workers is wrong, about which more in a moment.

Clearly the government has done polling indicating that this legislation, as well as legislating the bus drivers back to work, is popular. I have no doubt that people are fed up. It’s bad enough to have strikes in these areas of public importance when the parties are at least negotiating but when an impasse – in this case three impasses – occur, the public loses its enthusiasm for the process and the facts and just wants a settlement.

What, then, is the government doing wrong?

It goes to the nature of the relationship. With the bus drivers, the government could say with some justification that they were not involved. I say "some" justification because Victoria did make the original deal with the GVRD to set up Translink and clearly the deal was a bad one for the local authority, I believe, as do many others, that the government has an obligation to make this right. But with the Nurses and the Health Sciences workers the government is clearly the employer. It’s true that it has set up an employers organization, and that the places these workers work have some autonomy, the fact is that the government of British Columbia is the paymaster. Indeed, Finance Minister Collins, to his credit, has shed all pretence to being out of the process. He’s been calling the shots from the beginning just as he should be.

What is interesting here is that with the bus drivers, a considerable part of the unresolved dispute has been referred to binding arbitration … not so with the nurses and Health Science workers. In the latter two cases the settlement is being imposed.

But here’s the problem – the government of British Columbia has a huge conflict of interest. As the employer it is saying to itself as the government, impose a settlement. This is quite unacceptable.

I am no great fan of binding arbitration in most cases. They tend to increase wages every time. In fact this is why the NDP threatened legislation if public service unions didn’t accept 0-0-2%. They knew than any arbitrator would have given more. When, however, the government is the employer, binding arbitration is the only fair approach. Can you imagine any situation in the private sector where the workers would accept, or be expected to accept, the right of the employer to enforce his last offer?

It is said, of course, that this is the public’s money that’s being spent here so that the government must step in and legislate. That may make good politics but it’s lousy reasoning. All wages are paid by the public in the end. They are paid in increased costs of the goods or services provided and to the extent increased wages add to inflation, they pay there as well.

The fact is that the government has sat in judgment of its own cause and that’s wrong. Both disputes ought to have been sent to binding arbitration, plain and simple. Legislate them back, fair enough, but not with an employer mandated settlement.

The fun, so to speak, has just begun. I’m not quite sure how the HSA is going to react but Debra McPherson is going to retaliate and over a considerable period of time. She can do that because her rank and file are generally very dissatisfied, not just with the settlement, but with their job generally. Some of this dissatisfaction has grown from practices they once demanded and got, some of it’s because their leadership of the day knuckled under to the NDP’s insistence on 0-0-2% settlement offers. Some of it comes out of the present dispute which on its own accord will carry the seeds of bitterness. Much of it, however, goes to the very root of the nursing profession. It is a hugely stressful job with the lines of distinction between their duties and others on the hospital floor very blurred. Much of it is because nurses feel under inordinate pressure to stay employed and put up with things out of a public expectation of duty to be performed.

This general statement can be made and I think supported – the nursing profession feels badly done by as a profession and it is by no means all to do with money.

There is a final point. The nurses have not been able to get the public to grasp two issues – they will only reach parity with Alberta after the passage of some time and they have been forced to concede changes to the amount of time it takes nurses to work their way into higher income brackets.

This is going to simmer. Debra McPherson is a militant labour leader and she means to stay in control. She was the leader a few years ago and she saw what happened during the time she was away. She can be depended upon to keep up the pressure.

That doesn’t make the government wrong but it should make them aware that a key component of the Healthcare system is angry, militant and unlikely to change.

Some, indeed much of that anger, militancy and stubbornness could have been avoided, I believe, by the government ordering the nurses to continue to work under the old contract until arbitration.

I fear that the government is going to find that this is one of those situations where, in the initial moments, you pat yourself on the back … but where, down the road apiece, you kick yourself in the ass.