Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry

The majority of people that call 911 in our region speak to an operator asking them if they want police, fire or ambulance. The various police and fire agencies in each city get calls for their community downstreamed to them, but if you ask for the ambulance, you get BCAS. We are the only game in town, and as such take a lot of requests for help from a large population.

Sometimes, when the calls are put through to us they disconnected or we lose the caller for various reasons: caller hung up, bad cell connection, etc… A coworker and friend picked up a 911 call like this early in his shift recently. When he answered the phone, “BC Ambulance Service, for what city?”, he heard a baby crying in the background and man’s voice. Then the line went dead.

Cell phones and 911 can be a pain in the @$$. All we know is the address of the cell phone tower near the patient but not the patient’s actual location. Lack of this address location information makes our jobs a lot harder if the caller isn’t able to tell us where they are. This particular caller called from a cell phone. The next step is the most obvious: call them back.

No answer. Next, the call taker phoned Telus (the predominant phone company here) to try to find an address. Telus told us it was a Telus Mobility number and to call them. After calling them the call taker was told that it was actually a Bell cell phone number and to call them. The call taker worked to find a billing address from Bell who refered him to their security department. As you can imagine, this has a low probability of success due to the ‘mobile’ nature of mobile phones. The cell phone security division provided us with a billing address and a landline phone number.

He tried a call to the landline number – Pizza Hut??? No one at Pizza Hut needed our help.

The call taker, finding this a little odd, phoned the police to have them attend at the address with us for our crew’s safety. The event was created and an ambulance is started on the way.

One final attempt by the call taker was made to call the cell phone. SUCCESS!! The voice he heard earlier answered the phone:

“Hello sir … did you call 911 and disconnected? Can we help you?”

“I was worried about my friend, but everything is alright now.”

“Alright, did you hang up on 911?”

“Yup. I hung up to go check on my friend.”

The outcome? Well, a call taker in a very busy communication centre took almost 30 minutes to try to track down a caller who didn’t need help. All he needed to do was tell us he no longer required help before disconnecting.

There is a lot emphasis placed on not making prank 911 calls. I would say that these types of calls happen far more often than prank calls. Many people don’t dial ‘9′ then ‘1′ and wait to dial the last ‘1′ to be sure they are needed. They dial up the whole number and give little thought to the consequenses of hanging up before making contact.

Please don’t hang up. We’ll try for a long time to track you down assuming the whole time you desperately need help.

Well, what’s next?  What else can we do?

A friend has a few options:

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:

1. The provincial government will legislate us back to work by the end of next week.
2. If you don’t wear your tshirt (rather than your uniform shirt), you will have your union card pulled.
3. They are just waiting for us to do something stupid so they can force us back to work.
4. The Union doesn’t want us to work OT.
5. The Union wants us to work OT.
6. All overtime is at mandatory rates.

Feel free to comment and add anything you’ve heard.  I’ll add to the list as I hear more.

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 made, members are making the choice of whether to rise up and show the public how unhappy we are with bad faith bargaining by donning a new white tshirt with a flourescent annoyance printed on both sides or, since the public don’t see us in the centre, just wear our normal uniform. 

Actually, some staff have made their choices based on other factors:

• wearing it since the tshirt is more comfortable than the regular uniform shirt,
• wearing it to show our other union brothers and sisters we support them in our job action even though we’re not seen by the public,
• wearing it when they know they won’t be seen by management,
• wearing it to avoid retaliation from other staff who are wearing them,
• not wearing it because the smaller sizes available make you look like a French cyclist,
• wearing to show off your ample male bosom,
• not wearing it to avoid discipline from management,
• wearing it only at dinner time since it’s better to soil a tshirt,
• wearing it to keep others from being singled out,
• simply giving them to a coworker to be used as a shop rag,

Where do I sit on the fence?  Well, to be honest, I’m not sure yet.  I am sure that I’ll be wearing one sooner or later, but I can’t say it won’t be for any really good reason other than to keep my tires from being slashed.

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 can create some uneccesary delays in patient care.  We desperately need a good contract so we can all get back to our busines.

We see Management on an regular basis in the Dispatch Centre due to our proximity to regional headquarters.  They stop by to check in, ask questions or just observe.  On any given day, there are as many or more Management staff within 200 feet of our office than we have EMD/EMCT staff on duty.

Don’t get me wrong.  Without exception, the management we deal with on a day to day basis are very respectful of the Dispatch staff.  There is, however, always going to be that niggling deep down inside feeling that we are being watched.

On the other side we have our Union brothers and sisters on the street; all out looking for the same outcome.  The dispatch centre has responsibility to look out for them and the work they are doing while keeping up the strike plan outlined by our union executive.

This is where it gets dicey.  As an example, part of the strike plan was ”Crew members are not to do vehicle exchanges”.  In the dispatch centre, a manager directs me to ask a crew to switch into a spare vehicle.  I do as I am directed and am called by a strike coordinator asking me why I am directing crews to go against union direction.  Wow!  All I’ve done is as I was directed.  The crews can say no, call the manager in question or call their strike coordinator to ask for direction, but to call me out as going against union direction makes me feel like I’m caught in the middle more than I already am.

The Essential Services Order (ESO) from the Labour Relations Board (LRB) is pretty specific when it comes to following the direction of the employer.  Cupe 873 is seems to be focusing more on what we can’t do and less on what we could do.

I think it’s about time we started to get a little bit more creative in our job action.  We need the media and the public behind us which doesn’t seem to be the outcome of the road the union executive have put us on.  We need to show the public we are unhappy, without giving the impression that we aren’t still looking out for their safety.  We need to have journalists riding along with us to see how busy we are and how dangerous it can be on the streets.

This is destined to be one of those long and drawn out battles that no one will win.  The dynamic between managment and the union AND the dynamic between some of the members within the union will never be the same.  Hopefully we end up winning more than we have lost.

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 inevitably conjured images of a money tree growing in the back yard; a white glow surrounding the branches with the money leaves glimmering magically with light from an unidentified source.  My younger brother would most likely break my trance with a tantrum soon after.  As most kids do, with the vision over, we would move on.

I see a similar pattern at work.  People do not understand why there isn’t an ambulance waiting on every corner ready to pounce from the trees onto the next emergency.  They need an ambulance and why isn’t it already there?  Doesn’t the ambulance fairy know?  I’ve tried bibbity, bobbity, boo, but it hasn’t worked so far.

I’m being overly dramatic.  But am I?  Medical emergencies seem to cause a change in brain chemistry – no matter who it is that is having the emergency.

Our latest job action has made this situation worse.  Some paramedics have taken to putting large “ON STRIKE” stickers on the sides of the ambulance.  Delays chalked up to call volume 6 months ago are now, in the eyes of the public, due to a perceived refusal to attend - seemingly job action related. 

If you read this blog (and I know at least 4 people do), get the word out.  We have issues with the employer, not the public.  We became paramedics, EMDs and EMCTs to help the people of our communities.  Up until now, that help has been at the expense of our families and ourselves.  The hope for job action outcome is that we can have a healthy family and community while being compensated appropriately.