How are the negotiations going?

Another t-shirt use?

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The Future?

Well, what’s next?  What else can we do?
A friend has a few options:

Rumour Mill

I love the rumour mill.  It’s very entertaining to just sit back and listen to both sides.
Here is a list of my favourites:

The provincial government will legislate us back to work by the end of next week.
If you don’t wear your tshirt (rather than your uniform shirt), you will have your union card pulled.
They are just [...]

Bring on the tshirts?

We’ve started on a campaign to give us the ”opportunity to be “civilly disobedient” and demonstrate union solidarity without putting patients at risk” by wearing “on strike” tshirts at work rather than the normal uniform.  While the implementation has been a little bit dicey, the idea could be fairly sound.
While it has been argued that there is no decision to be [...]

Walking a Very Thin Line.

The vast majority of our EMD and EMCT staff are licensed Primary Care Paramedics.  All of our staff are Cupe 873 members.  We believe as all our members do that our ambulance service is “a system in peril”  (saveourparamedics.com).  Our short staffing (which, understandably, is also a Nationwide problem) and haphazard coverage in some of British Columbia’s smaller towns [...]

Where is the ambulance?

Like all kids, my brothers and I regularly bugged our parents for stuff while growing up.  We couldn’t figure out why instant gratification wasn’t ours.  Whether it be for a toy, a milkshake or simply some money to go to the corner store, the answer was always the same:  “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”  That statement [...]

Who Are We Punishing – A Tale of AVL

Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) was adopted by BCAS a short time ago.  In broad terms, AVL is a system by which a cel phone type arangement using GPS signals sends information to our CAD system showing a live version of where all our ambulances are.  It is a great help for confirming who is the closest car to a call, [...]

The Changes Roll In

A lot of things have changed over the months I have been away.  You may be surprised to hear I have some thoughts on them.
Looming Strike Action
The Ambulance Paramedics of BC (CUPE 873) will be in a position to strike as of April 1.  Let’s not delude ourselves, strike will happen.  The hardcore members of [...]