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Deal for 14,000 B.C. community health care workers

BCGEU urges members across the province to ratify the proposed settlement.

British Columbia Government and Service Employees' Union (BCGEU/NUPGE)Vancouver (8 Jan. 2010) - British Columbia's 14,000 community health care workers, including 8,800 members of the B.C. Government and General Services' Union (BCGEU/NUPGE) - are being encouraged to ratify a new collective agreement that has achieved improvements on priority issues identified by delegates to the BCGEU Bargaining Conference.

Many of the bargaining gains will put extra money in members' pockets, including the new BlueNet card (direct pay drug card), shift premiums for weekend work and higher vision care benefits. A new joint committee will also tackle the longstanding problem of scheduling where a solution would increase members' access to hours and could open opportunities for health workers to work within an 8 ½-hour window.

These were all priorities going into the brief and intense round of bargaining, says the union.

Another new provision will continue dental and medical benefits for members taking up to eight weeks of compassionate care leave. A new working group has been established to make recommendations on a plan that will ensure ill workers who exhaust sick leave banks have coverage until the the long-term disability plan begins.

BCGEU says members also demanded increased job security and the proposed agreement contains employment security provisions that make it more expensive for the employer to contract out work. The changes would also lower the threshold at which the new provisions take effect.

In addition, the proposed settlement includes changes in the wage grid or benchmarks for a relatively small number of LPNs, LPN supervisors and certified dental assistants whose roles and scope of practice have expanded and for certified dental assistants to address changes in scope of practice and recruitment and retention issues.

"In a year of very tough bargaining, your committee was able to find under-utilized benefits and rework them into a range of improvements that are now accessible to a broad cross-section of the membership," says BCGEU President Darryl Walker.

BCGEU's Community Health Bargaining Committee (CHBC) is recommending acceptance of the tentative agreement. For full details click here. For the appendix which references specific articles and changes in language click here.

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The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is one of Canada's largest labour organizations with over 340,000 members. Our mission is to improve the lives of working families and to build a stronger Canada by ensuring our common wealth is used for the common good. NUPGE