Take this job and shove it. That's the general sentiment among many of the skilled trades people working in the hospitals, now for even less money than their counterparts in construction and other sectors. (Most tradespeople were already working at a discount compared to wages through their trade unions BEFORE the Campbell government legislated its wage rollback.) I for one -- a journeyman plumber at St. Paul's Hospital -- was not about to sit around and take a fat pay cut when construction is already booming, and will only get better. I'm one of the lucky ones in this fiasco -- I walked out of St. Paul's a couple of weeks ago, straight into a new job through Local 170 of the Plumbers' & Pipefitters' Union. With $5 more per hour in pay, similar benefits, and less risk of contracting serious illness. The other plumber at St. Paul's quit the same week as me, and also went straight to another union job. Unfortunately, I know the impacts of the layoffs and rollbacks have been devastating for thousands of my fellow hospital workers. I quit St. Paul's the day the kitchen staff were replaced by contracted food services from Sedexho. These people worked hard for what they earned. And from what I saw of the contracted-out cleaning services in practice (Aramark was operating in St. Paul's for about six months before the strike), this business of laying off trained and experienced staff as a cost-cutting exercise can only lead to trouble. How thoroughly would you clean a bloody operating room for $10/hour? Within the skilled trades sector, it is hard to see how hospitals will keep their plumbers, carpenters, electricians and others, let alone attract young new tradespeople to replace the many who are close to retiring. Good luck Gordo. St. Paul's -- which is falling apart due to inadequate staffing and a bare minimum of preventative maintenance -- needs six plumbers, not the current 0.

People need money in their jeans in order to participate in the economy and society that they live in. People that work in hospitals are no different, yet Campbell and his cronies have seen fit to slash many jobs to a low wage that has dropped their standard of living drastically, all the while proclaiming that there are far more $16 per hour jobs than ever before. My wife is an LPN who has taken a wage cut, and I`ve watched firsthand how this government has demoralized her and her co-workers. And yes, the public did watch the way these people were treated, and I suspect that many had their eyes opened.

How can the HEU have any bargaining power at all when the leadership of the IWA undermines the process by brokering private deals with the employer? The 'divide and conquer' strategy adopted by Gordon Campbell, et.al. appears to be working, thanks to the efforts of a few well-placed individuals. Some insight can be found by visiting the Elections BC website and examining the financial contributions of the corporations that made it possible for the current provincial regime to take power. The Columbia Encyclopedia states, "Capitalism is grounded in the concept of free enterprise, which argues that government intervention in the economy should be restricted and that a free market, based on supply and demand, will ultimately maximize consumer welfare." Since it is impossible for a monopoly to even exist in a true 'free market' environment, our current economic system can hardly be called 'capitalism'. Some things should not be controlled by entities that measure success by profit alone. Quality health care is much more important to civil society than the short term profits gained by a corporate body within a flawed economic system. We need leadership with policies that balance social, environmental, AND economic concerns. For that, we have to stick together.

I sure hope the BCNU and BCTF pick up on your last words RLM. >p< Very good advice, because if the membership of those two unions think they may be able to avoid a messy contract battle, they are dreaming. >p< Gordo and company are desperate and need a bogeyman or two as much as old GW needs another terrorist threat.

"At least two more big battles are brewing on the labour front - and both must be fought before the fixed date of the next election in May 2005. One group involved is the teachers, the other the nurses." writes Barbara McLintlock.

While I disagree with a number of the observations of Barbara in this story, I see dubious value in nursing old wounds around the late HEU "event". Though I can well understand, some of you in the HEU may feel differently on that score. (The best way of predicting the future is still, the painstaking study of the past, represented as history.) For myself, I feel "fairly comfortable" in my own analysis and understanding of this particular "class struggle", as being an example of, firstly, a failure of the HEU leadership, for a whole complex of reasons having to do with the character of the HEU organization and structure itself, largely-, after which the Fed could only accept their decision. (The NDP? Another story for another time, again, with little benefit to re-opening old wounds here.)

Secondly, of course, for all the unhappiness with the way events went down and the performance of their leadership, such as "may" have existed, or appeared to exist, from my position far removed, the "membership" of HEU did afterall, "appear" to take it all lying down, pretty much like a whipped cur-, again, near as I can tell.

So really, there was a failure on two major fronts, the way I see it, with a chickenshit leadership and a dubiously "democratic" structure, and a membership not yet "apparently" whupped enough that they were prepared to "take them on". (A failure of leadership is, at least, seldom a failure of leadership alone. There are "always", or near so, ways for people to deal with that "failure of leadership", however difficult that may be, if'n they are really of a mind and the "will". It may take more than some gumption, granted, but it's still a fact.)

Which practically begs the observation that "leadership", as it has come to be practised in recent, postwar, politically "Social Democratic" dominated "labour culture", really has more to do with "following"; doing no more than is absolutely pressed upon you and unavoidable, than true "leadership" per se. Which by the very nature implicit in the concept of "leadership" itself, suggests more "risk taking" than what has typically come to characterize, at least, the "business union" model of trade union leadership of the recent, now past, prosperity decades of the postwar. (And there are always "exceptions", of course.)

The overarching reality is, we are still not in a place where working class folks are yet prepared to really get out there and "push", change if necessary, in "leadership", and in this way, "prepare themselves", organizationally and with frontline cadre, to "take the system on". Though my "sense" is, as ephemeral a thing as "sensing" is, that this is changing-, however much, still NOT enough.

In any case, the voices I am hearing are telling me, as Barbara partially tells it here: "At least two more big battles are brewing on the labour front - and both must be fought before the fixed date of the next election in May 2005. ..."

Something one "might" want to do is, fix one's focus on, and mark the months next year, leading up to the provincial election, on your calendar. I understand there are even more than just the teachers and nurses with contracts coming up for renewal around the same time time, prior to the provincial election. (Names escape me, at the moment.)It seems to me at least, that there is an alignment of the stars taking shape, which might be fortuitous to those of a mind and "will" to start planning and organizing now. Keeping in mind also, any "leadership" failures of the past which you "feel" MAY have occurred.

All in all, for folks paying attention to the world around them, the events leading up to the next provincial election "might" just be interesting-, when it is especially important that matters NOT just be "business as usual", and there MIGHT be a need to " sieze the headlines and the agenda".

Barring any failures of leadership, and especially "the will" of folks to hold them to it, of course.

Well said Coyote. One would hope the ''leadership'' comes up with something more original than another $1 million expenditure to ferry 30,000 to 40,000 people over to Victoria for a photo-op, which did little other than shore up the partially privatized ferry system's bottom line.