BC health care workers vote to strike

[grammafreddy]

deleted - double post

[grammafreddy]

I agree - that was really ballsy of them to give themselves and their mucky-muck upper echelon bureaucrat staff a raise when they were saying no to the unions - and they were very substantial raises, too!

Those people are also paid from the public purse and if the public purse can't afford raises for one sector, they can't afford them for any sector. I don't blame you for being angry about that - and I was, too. I fired off a nasty letter to my MLA and to the government about it, too. Did you?

Not that it did any good ...

That is my point GF. I honestly believe that you are aiming low , if you know what I mean.

Quite honestly, I would have preferred if the government front-line workers had gotten a modest increase, with no increase to their benefits rather than the upper echelon getting a huge raise and you getting none.

And I would much rather see the whole health care system overhauled and made far more efficient and sustainable than it is right now and getting rid of the waste and whatever (whoever) is wasting our money.


Psst .. can ya check your quote stuff before ya post? Thanks. Maybe try previewing it first to see if the quotations are right?

[steven lloyd]

The solution? Let’s not look at cutting bureaucracy, top heavy government or superfluous spending. God forbid we introduce fair and equitable and realistic taxation. This stuff (critical services) shouldn’t be costing us anything anyway. I know. Let’s dump more work on the front line workers and pay them less (they're overpaid and underworked anyway). That’ll solve all our problems. So simple. (ya gotta love it when you hear a politician say "times are tough, "we" have to tighten our belts").

[greylady]

^^ We also have to cut more front line workers, like the ones who actually do the work in caring for people, people actually following up on health care or legal problems (why on earth would we want to waste time following up on child molesters or wife beaters - they said they would behave!), or home care workers. Just add a couple more supervisors/mangers to study the problem of why there even is a problem...

[Verminator]

New money, old money, I don't give a crap. It's semantics, totally meaningless. The real issue is fairness, and to get to that we really, really need to look at the health authorities and their collective responsibility for wasting massive amounts of tax dollars that would - or should - otherwise have gone into direct patient care. This should be an issue on the front page of every newspaper and news website, but since the HA's are defacto governments accountable to no one, it'll never happen. The status quo is far too lucrative for them.

[grammafreddy]

When a union worker buys a house or a car or a new appliance (thus helping to drive the private sector economy) does that old money then become new money, or is it new old money? In addition to the fact the services being provided by those recycled dollars is critical to everyone’s well-being, the workers who spend their recycled dollars in the community help to generate new wealth dollars. It is really amazing the symbiotic relationship that exists (or at least can exist) in collective systems. We could pretend we (society) don't need any of those services I suppose. Or make everything "for profit"

I don't know what the dyed-in-the-wool Libertarians would call it, Steven. I am not one of them and I see value in having some publicly funded people and programs (health care being one of them but even that is getting stretched beyond reason in some cases these days).

My point with all of this is not to pick on government employees, but just to have them realize that their wages and benefits and pensions are generated from the private sector working person. When there are fewer of them or when they are not making as much money, then government has less with which to conduct its business - which includes paying their employees.

In my perfect world there is a very robust private sector because that helps to support all the government employees and the social programs people need and are accustomed to (with some exceptions ). But when the whole world takes a kicking in the private sector's tush, government revenues go down because they don't receive as much from taxing the private sectors' wages.

How can any government worker hate capitalism when they understand this simple concept of where their wages come from?

Sometimes I wonder why they are called government "jobs" when, really, they are government debt - the government owes that money to those people who work for them. And it owes that pension money to them long after an "employee" ceases to "work" for the government.

Something has to give. If not government wages, then what?

[grammafreddy]

The solution? Let’s not look at cutting bureaucracy, top heavy government or superfluous spending. God forbid we introduce fair and equitable and realistic taxation. This stuff (critical services) shouldn’t be costing us anything anyway. I know. Let’s dump more work on the front line workers and pay them less (they're overpaid and underworked anyway). That’ll solve all our problems. So simple. (ya gotta love it when you hear a politician say "times are tough, "we" have to tighten our belts").

You are being sarcastic, right?

[grammafreddy]

See this? http://www.castanet.net/news/BC/82873/2 ... -mine-jobs

This angers me - a lot. It angers me because I can see the same thing happening in health care, too.

[greylady]

^^ Yep. My 89 year old mom had home care come in to help her with her meds, baths, and we had to finally call the Health Authority to find someone else. Because my old mom could not understand what her home care person was talking about because of the home care person's lack of English language skills. Imagine being cared for by ESL nurses and techs in a hospital when you are sick!

[Verminator]

^^ Yep. My 89 year old mom had home care come in to help her with her meds, baths, and we had to finally call the Health Authority to find someone else. Because my old mom could not understand what her home care person was talking about because of the home care person's lack of English language skills. Imagine being cared for by ESL nurses and techs in a hospital when you are sick!

It's already happening. My 88 year old Mom's in a long-term care facility that has a fair number of ESL care staff, mostly Filipino. I have nothing against them as they all seem to be very caring and sincere individuals, but my Mom simply cannot communicate with them. The same was true when Mom was in the hospital. Some of these folks have such a rudimentary command of English it's actually quite scary.

[Jeckle]

BCGEU has voted in favor of a contract.
Quite a sweet deal too. imo

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/go ... story.html

[gordon_as]

Time for a different thread. Allowing a company to discriminate against Canadian workers and bring in their own cheap labour from china to strip raw materials from our country and probably ship it back to china to power the sweat shops that churn out poor quality (and sometimes dangerous) products to then ship back over here and sell to us is as wrong as this sentence is long.

[Jeckle]

And the nurses. A raise, but added hours to their work week. A schedulers nightmare to fill 37.5 hours a week with 12 hour shifts. Not too sure how that will work.
http://www.vancouversun.com/health/nurs ... story.html

[keith1612]

its just taxpayers money, give them a raise.
its a endless bank account, the liberals have proven that.

[JLives]

Public sector wages are generated by ALL tax paying citizens. My partner is private sector union, in the trades. He works on private and public contracts. You will find a blend of public and private money in many sectors. Money is money, it all spends the same.

Aside from that, I can't imagine the conditions health workers deal with. It's not something I could do. I was in ICU daily for three months when my Mom had a brain aneurism burst and everyone I encountered was kind, capable and empathetic. They are the hardest working people I have ever met. They have my support and respect. I would never call them debt as if they are a burden on society. They are a gift and I consider myself damn lucky to live in an area with such a great system.