Ensuring the safety of patients in BCs health care facilities is the priority for nurses, as they began bargaining this week for a new contract with the provinces health authorities.

HSAs Registered Psychiatric Nurses are represented by Lions Gate RPN Val Barker and Senior Labour Relations Officer Pat Blomme.

Representatives of the Provincial Nurses Bargaining Association ... including Registered Psychiatric Nurses represented by HSA ... are heading to the bargaining table this week.

The constituent unions are meeting today. Bargaining with the employer begins January 24-25. More bargaining dates are set February 20-24.

RPN & Lions Gate Hospital Chief Steward Val Barker will represent HSA RPNs, along with Senior Labour Relations Officer Pat Blomme.

HSA President Reid Johnson is not optimistic about media reports for a -new government mandate" for collective bargaining in 2012 after yesterdays Throne Speech from the BC government.

As of April 1, 2011, new language came into effect in the HSPBA and NBA collective agreements with respect to an Enhanced Disability Management Program (EDMP) designed to facilitate an employee-centred, pro-active, appropriate and customized disability management program for employees with occupational and non-occupational illness/injury.

As a workplace based program, successful implementation of the EDMP requires designated union representatives who will play an active role in ensuring members realize the greatest benefit from this groundbreaking program.

Fraser Health Authority announced last week that it is reducing the number of Registered Psychiatric Nurses and RNs caring for seniors in residential care.

FHA is laying off approximately a dozen Registered Psychiatric Nurses, among more than 100 nurses to be laid off in FHA-owned and -operated facilities.

The FHA layoffs affect RPNs and RNs at these sites:

(VANCOUVER) - Reid Johnson, President of the Health Sciences Association, and Debra McPherson, President of the BC Nurses Union, are calling on WorkSafe BC to immediately order VIHA to protect staff at Eric Martin Pavilion, the mental health facility at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria.

The demand for action follows a series of violent assaults on staff by a patient with severe mental illness. VIHAs cuts to psychiatric services and their inaction on improving hospital safety leave patients, staff and the wider community vulnerable to violence. 

In 2009, the Nurses Bargaining Association launched the Retroactive Portability of Seniority Initiative. The most common reason for denial of claims was that nurses remained casual at the first work site, making them ineligible to port their seniority. Many of these nurses remained casual on the advice of union stewards and labour relations officers.

Due to this fact, the NBA has agreed to re-open claims for nurses caught in these circumstances.

The Health Sciences Association of BC, the union that represents more 15,000 health science professionals who deliver the diagnostic, clinical and rehabilitation services in BCs hospitals and communities, is sounding the alarm about the provincial governments broken promise to protect health care services.

In an intensive province-wide radio campaign, HSA blows the whistle on the cuts to health services ... including the reduction of more than 10,000 MRI scans in the Vancouver area alone.

Following the protocol issued by BCs Medical Health Officer, beginning next week health care workers will be offered vaccination against the H1N1 virus. This includes all HSA members who work with vulnerable populations.

HSA encourages members to participate in the H1N1 vaccination program.

When you receive your H1N1 vaccination, you will also be offered vaccination against seasonal flu.

Please be advised that Compass has now locked out union members working at retail food service locations in the Fraser Health Authority.

While picket locations do not impede other union members from going to work, the B.C. Federation of Labour and the United Steelworkers Local 2009 are asking union members to not use any of these food services while management tries to operate these sites.