EDITORIAL: Essential service
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Updated: July 15, 2009 2:29 PM
Paramedics have been on strike for the past three months, as the big stickers pasted on the side of ambulances indicate, although they’re still working.
Paramedic duties fall under provincial essential services legislation, like teachers, which means they are limited in what job action they can take, like refusing to perform administrative duties.
But the Emergency and Health Services Commission, which operates the B.C. Ambulance Service — the bargaining unit for the province — won’t compare the pay of other essential services, or emergency services to that of paramedics. Then paramedics would look underpaid.
And they are at $64,000 a year, for primary care. Advanced care paramedics make $91,000.
The union wants wage parity with police officers or other paramedics in Canada. More than 300 Vancouver police officers made more than $100,000 last year.
Paramedics also make less than firefighters.
They have asked for a 16 per cent increase spread equally over four years. They accepted under their previous contract, which expired March 31, a three-year wage freeze, followed by a two per cent increase. That was when the economy wasn’t suffering. Now they’re being told it’s a bad time to ask for more money. They have been offered a one-year deal with a three per cent raise and $3,800 signing bonus.
Meanwhile, politicians accepted a 29 per cent raise two years ago. What is saving lives worth?
We don’t know because paramedics can’t strike. Thus, they have no negotiating power. And what would we do without them?
Paramedics are deemed an essential service for good reason and they should be compensated fairly for that, not held at ransom.
– Maple Ridge News
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