May 29 2008
Over 200 nurses celebrate Nightingale’s birth at the Legislature
Over 200 UNA nurses rallied in front of the Alberta Legislature on Monday, May 12th to kick off nursing week, celebrate Florence Nightingale’s birthday, and call for action on the nursing shortage.
The nurses brought “silhouettes”, white cut-outs that represented nurses missing and sorely needed in Alberta’s health system. They also brought the “Nursing Care Plan for Nursing in Alberta” which outlines nine recommendations for dealing with the shortage. The plan was presented to Premier Ed Stelmach and all the MLAs.
“It is vital that this government and employers across this province hear us today,” Heather Smith. “The citizens of Alberta cannot have their nursing care put on the back burner. Unless we implement this nursing care plan now, the shortage will get worse.”
UNA’s “Nursing Care Plan” is available as a downloadable PDF on the website: www.una.ab.ca.
New negotiation dates set for Extendicare
Top level representation from Extendicare is set to meet with the nurses’ negotiating committee at the next dates set for talks in June. Nurses at the Edmonton Somerset Extendicare location strongly voted for a strike mandate on May 14. The nurses have held two information pickets in Edmonton and two at the Extendicare facility in Lethbridge as well. Extendicare’s offer is FAR lower than terms for other Alberta nurses:
• less pension
• inferior benefits
• lower premiums for working premiums and shift
• a lower premium for being in charge
• way below the provincial standard for recognition of educational qualifications
• NO long-term disability plan.
The nurses say Extendicare must come closer to competing or it will lose even more staff. The negotiations cover agreements for nurses at nine separate Extendicare facilities in the province.
LPNs gearing up on negotiations
This week LPNs and support staff held rallies in front of hospitals and health facilities around the province to draw attention to their stalled contract talks. The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) has been in negotiations on behalf of health workers for some time and so far Employers’ offers have been less than satisfactory.
“We strongly emphasized to the Employer that sustainable salaries and market demand solutions are critical; recruitment, retention and reward issues must involve long term solutions, and will only be solved by competitive wages, improved compensation and other monetary incentives,” said AUPE Staff Negotiator John Wevers.
One Alberta Health Authority April 1, 2009
Misleading statements coming out of Health and Wellness glossed over the fact that Alberta’s Health Regions will be abolished barely ten months from now. The new provincial board was the focus of the original announcement, but hard details came out much later. The same day as the announcement, May 15, Health and Wellness Minister Ron Liepert signed a Ministerial Order on amalgamating the Regions but it was not posted on the government’s website until late Friday, May 22. The statement is blunt:
Effective April 1, 2009:
a. The Disestablished Authorities [all of them except East Central] are disestablished and their business and affairs are wound up.
b. The boundaries of East Central Health are amended to encompass all areas within the province of Alberta, with the name of the area to be amended to the “Alberta Health Region”.
The name of the body corporate which consists of the members of the regional health authority appointed for East Central Health is amended to the “Alberta Health Authority”.
Saskatchewan nurses’ negotiations at crisis point
The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses has been meeting nearly around the clock in provincial contract talks in recent days. They are working through a conciliator (or mediator) and say they are currently (May 27) preparing “a package to SAHO that would conclude negotiations from the perspective of our committee” or their final offer.
Saskatchewan nurses voted 77% in favour of strike action on May 7.
The employer, Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations (SAHO), says it is offering the nurses 34% to 37% salary increases, including a 2% long-service increment similar to the one negotiated by UNA in Alberta.
The nurses have already rejected the SAHO offer and have indicated they also need their non-monetary issues addressed. Early this spring the Saskatchewan government signed a “partnership agreement” on retention and recruitment. SUN says the Employers have refused to meet the recruitment and retention provisions in the agreement in their contract offer.
Government projections far short of 2,000 new RN grads in 2012
The Stelmach government’s principle election promise on the nursing shortage was to graduate 2,000 new RNs a year by 2012, but UNA has recently obtained Advanced Education documents that project only 1657 new grads by then.
The Advanced Education Department supplied a report on RN and LPN enrolment and graduate projections through to 2011-2012 in response to a Freedom of Information request from UNA. The April 2008 report showed 1239 RN grads in 2006, but only 1,367 in 2010 and then a slight rise to 1,657 in 2012. LPN graduate numbers only rise from 635 in 2006 to 781 in 2012.
Shift work associated with cancer risk
Shift work was classified as a Group 2A carcinogen in a recent announcement from the International Agency on Cancer. That means it is “probably carcinogenic to humans”. Studies show that nurses and flight attendants have a higher risk of breast cancer than the population at large. But Dr. Marilyn Borugian from the BC Cancer Agency says a wide variety of possibilities in night shift work, diet, inadequate exercise, even family stress may be the actual influences on cancer rates.
BC residents find no inter-provincial trade barriers at BC- Alberta border
On the first anniversary of the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) between BC and Alberta, a group of Golden residents travelled to the provincial border armed with a magnifying glass to examine the border and find significant trade barriers.
Failing to find fences, inspection stations or customs check points, the group concluded that TILMA had been sold to the people of both provinces as a solution to a problem that simply does not exist.
The controversial TILMA agreement, signed secretly between the BC and Alberta premiers in 2006, came into effect on April 1, 2007. Carleen Pickard, the Council of Canadians’ regional organizer for BC and the Yukon, says TILMA undermines local democracy. The deal will prevent municipalities and other public bodies from choosing services or making purchasing decisions based on local concerns, she says.
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