By Jennifer Feinberg
The Chilliwack Progress
CHILLIWACK, Canada — If it wasn’t for the impromptu protest in Chilliwack this week, many locals might not be aware the province’s ambulance paramedics have been on strike for five months.
Members of CUPE 873 showed up on the little green space across from city hall Tuesday, erecting tents, wearing bright T-shirts and waving at passing motorists.
“It comes down to respect from the employer,” said Jan Falkoski, a local ambulance paramedic. Wage parity with other emergency services workers is a key issue in the five-month old strike, he underlined.
On-call paramedics in rural communities get $2 an hour as they wait for calls with a pager, and the union says that makes it that much harder to attract young workers.
“A lot of the work we do is in tandem with emergency services like police and fire workers, so we’re doing similar work but being paid significantly less,” Falkoski said. It can be as much as $10,000 or $20,000 less per year for full-time workers.
Ambulance Paramedics of B.C. from Chilliwack, Agassiz as well as Princeton and Boston Bar, showed up in Chilliwack at various times over two days at the impromptu protest site on Young Road, to help raise awareness about the workers’ situation.
About four tents were set up on the grass for those who were to camp there overnight.
“I support you all the way,” yells out a guy on a bicycle. “You do a lot of good work.”
The line of workers and some of their family members waved back at him in gratitude.
“See? We’ve got the support of everyone — except the government,” said another paramedic, Ed Dunlop who showed up when his shift ended.
“People have been honking as they pass by to tell us they’re behind us.”
The union has been without a contract since March 31, and reps have been pushing for an independent, third-party mediator with the mandate to make a binding agreement.
But Mike Sanderson, executive director of B.C. Ambulance Service for the Lower Mainland, said that’s a larger decision that he couldn’t address.
“But we did have a mediator in place, and we still have one available,” he said.
The employer’s formal offer was a one-year package with a three per cent increase.
“The union proposal that came back through mediation worked out to about a 40 per cent increase over a three-year period,” he said. It saw a 13 per cent general wage increase including 3 per cent in year one.
“So it worked out to a $65 million increase overall,” Sanderson said. “We’re prepared to resume negotiations but it will have to be toward something we can afford on behalf of the taxpayers.
“Obviously we have to work within our realities.”
The Essential Services Order from the Labour Relations Board technically limits the workers’ strike action, and restricted picketing with signs during the last provincial election.
“But we’ve had enough,” Falkoski added. “The bottom line is we need the government to show accountability, and we need the people to contact their MLAs and tell them they must be accountable.”
Reprinted with permission from The Chilliwack Progress