Tentative Agreement in community health makes progress on priorities in tough bargaining round

VIDEO: BCGEU president Darryl Walker recommends acceptance of the tentative community health agreement 

BC's 14,000 Community Health Workers - including 8,800 BCGEU members - are being encouraged to ratify a new collective agreement that achieved improvements on priority issues identified by delegates to the BCGEU Bargaining Conference.

Many of the bargaining gains have a benefit for a large group of members, its including the new BlueNet card (direct pay drug card), shift premiums for weekend work, and higher vision care benefits. A new joint committee will tackle the long-standing 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.

A new provision will continue dental and medical benefits for members taking up to 8 weeks of compassionate care leave. A new STIIP 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 Long Term disability plan begins.

Members also demanded increased job security and the tentative agreement has new employment security provisions that make it more expensive for the employer to contract out work, and lower the threshold at which the provisions take effect.

The agreement also 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 is recommending acceptance.

For the full comprehensive report click here. For the appendix which references specific articles and changes in language click here.

For dates of ratification meetings click here.

For the Chinese version of the comprehensive report click here.

For Tagalog click here.

For Punjabi click here.