[antiwar-van] URGENT CALL FOR SUPPORT OF HEU WORKERS!

[Kira Koshelanyk]

End Attacks on Workers at Home and Abroad:

Call out for Support for BC HEU Workers!

 

**please forward widely**

 

On Thursday April 22nd 2004, the Hospital Employees Union of British Columbia gave their 72 hour notice for strike action. The HEU, an endorsing member of Mobilization Against War and Occupation, is a union that represents over 43,000 workers in BC, mainly women and people of colour. The HEU has faced increasingly severe attacks by the BC Liberal government over the past 3 years and members have suffered over 6,500 job losses in this short time.

 

The agenda of the BC Liberal government since coming to power in 2001 has included severe attacks against all poor and working people in the province, including ending funding to women’s centres, dismantling the Human Rights Commission, and launching a massive attack against labour. The membership of the HEU is over 87% women, with a large number of those women being immigrants, refugees and women of colour. With the Health services sector being the largest employer of women of colour and women immigrants and refugees, these attacks are blatantly attacks on worker’s rights but also attacks on the most marginalized sector of the work force.

 

In this era of war and occupation, we have seen both military and legislative attacks against oppressed people globally. As a coalition that fights for the rights of oppressed people under attack by imperialism in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and Haiti, we must also fight back when the Canadian and BC government’s attack oppressed people here. No imperialist attack abroad is without attacks at home.

 

Mobilization Against War and Occupation is supporting the HEU in solidarity with their fight. We encourage all people in Vancouver and BC to support as well as the struggle of the HEU is the struggle of all poor and working people, from Canada, to Iraq, to Palestine, to Haiti, to Afghanistan. We must unify the fight at home and abroad and mobilize in solidarity with the HEU on April 25th when strike action is taken. Through unity we will gain strength and through united action we will succeed!

 

Please join us and the HEU workers on the picket line at 4pm on Sunday April 25 at Vancouver General Hospital, Main Entrance!

 

Shannon Bundock and Kira Koshelanyk

Co-Chairs

Mobilization Against War and Occupation

 

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Attached below is the HEU press release on the issuing of the 72-hour strike notice. 

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April 22, 2004

Health unions serve 72-hour strike notice

Health unions representing 43,000 hospital and long-term care workers today issued 72-hour strike notice – which will become effective mid-day Sunday, April 25 – beginning with an overtime ban, but could expand to include picket lines and other actions. 

The announcement came in the wake of health employers’ continued refusal to put layoffs on hold during province-wide talks and move off their massive wage concession demands worth $900 million over three years. 

"Public health care is on the line. So are decent family-supporting jobs in communities across B.C.," says HEU secretary-business manager Chris Allnutt, chief spokesperson for the multi-union bargaining association. "That’s why we’re announcing today that our unions will take job action beginning Sunday." 

He says job action is something that no health care worker takes lightly and that local leaders have been working for weeks to ensure that, in the event of a strike, essential services would be in place. 

Allnutt says that over the past three years the Campbell Liberals’ health care agenda has proved a disaster for British Columbia. "Thousands of long-term care beds for seniors have been closed. Hospitals have been shut down. The health care team and the services they provide are being dismantled and sold off one piece at a time." 

He points out that as a result of the employer’s position at the bargaining table all health care workers and the services they deliver to the public are at risk. "Technicians and tradespeople, LPNs and medical records staff – everyone from the lab to the laundry and patient wards to the emergency room – are targeted for privatization." 

The unions say they came to the bargaining table with modest proposals to protect jobs and services, but were met with an employer that is unwilling to work toward solutions and a fair contract. 

"We hoped that health employers would come to the table and act as health care stewards, rather than obedient tools of the Campbell Liberals’ privatization agenda," says Allnutt. "We had hoped they would make a genuine effort to restore trust in the collective bargaining process, but it didn’t happen. "Health employers have seriously misjudged the situation they have created at the bargaining table." 

HEU represents about 40,000 workers affected by the contract talks. Ten other unions in the bargaining association including the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union and the International Union of Operating Engineers represent the remaining 3,000 workers. 

-30- 
Contact: Margi Blamey, HEU communications officer, 604-785-5324 (cell) 

 








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