Driftwood Editorial - Paramedics’ bitter pill
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Given that the province and B.C.’s paramedics haven’t been able to reach a compromise in more than seven months, it comes as no surprise they’re at odds over happenings that took place over the weekend.
Nearly 100 paramedics based mainly in the Lower Mainland failed to show up for work over the weekend, throwing paramedic service into disarray in numerous communities.
The province and the B.C. Ambulance Service were quick to cry foul, calling the stunt a “job action” organized by disgruntled employees who were forced back to work by provincial legislation passed earlier in the week.
The ambulance service withdrew accusations of an “illegal strike” on Tuesday afternoon, but that hasn’t served to smooth over relations between the two sides.
The union’s latest demand is an apology.
CUPE 873, the union representing B.C.’s paramedics, says the incident was but a series of extraordinary consequences, that employees all happened to be sick and tired at the same time.
Upon closer examination, maybe both sides aren’t that far apart after all.
Perhaps the province’s paramedics are simply sick and tired of being disgruntled.
According to provincial back-to-work legislation enacted on Nov. 7, paramedics will receive a one-year contract and a guaranteed three per cent raise.
Not only has the arrangement precipitated widespread disgust among paramedics, the people of British Columbia stand little chance of seeing a cure to the long-standing dispute any time soon.
Because the new contract is retroactive to early 2009, bargaining is set to restart in 2010, putting all the players exactly where they were before paramedics voted to begin their real “job action” on April 1, 2009.
Given that the gulf between paramedics and the B.C. Ambulance Service continues to grow ever larger almost a year after contract negotiations began, it’s becoming clear that the province is in no rush to administer any kind of serious cure to its ailing paramedics.
No wonder so many of them are sick and tired.
