BY PAUL KOURI
SASKATOON, Saskatchewan -For 10 days, 8,400 members of the
Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) on strike throughout this
western Canadian province successfully defied back-to-work
legislation, court injunctions, and an intense government
campaign to portray them as greedy and irresponsible. Nurses
started returning to work April 18 at the request of union
officials who signed a "framework agreement" with New
Democratic Party (NDP) provincial premier Roy Romanow and
Brian Rourke, chairman of the employers' Saskatchewan
Association of Health Organizations (SAHO). The NDP is a
social democratic party with organizational ties to the
unions.
The government had said it would never negotiate with the union until its members went back to work. In the agreement it promised a bit more money than it had decreed in the back- to-work legislation, known as Bill 23.
Initial reactions from nurses to ending the strike were mixed. "I don't think we could have continued any longer," Janet Wirchenko, a nurse at St. Paul's Hospital, said on her way into work April 19.
Another nurse leaving work, Karen Bjarnarson, said, "I think we should have continued until we got something fair. I feel abused, violated, and disgusted."
Nurses rally in face of gov't demands
The government passed Bill 23 five hours after the nurses
walked out on April 8. Hundreds of nurses chanted and pounded
on the doors of the legislature as the legislation was being
debated. That evening 2,000 nurses from around the province
rallied in Regina and resolved to continue their strike.
The SAHO obtained a court order April 11 threatening the nurses with heavy fines and the possibility of jailing union leaders. Nurses responded with an even bigger rally of 3,000 on April 12, again in Regina. They chanted "Hell no! We won't go!" The event was covered on national television.
Addie Loomes, a home-care nurse for 23 years, said, "If they are going to legislate contracts they may as well ban unions. I think that's one reason we're getting so much support. Two hundred and fifty teachers joined our picket line last Friday."
"I'm willing to stay out as long as it takes. I can't continue working under these conditions," declared Maureen Mills, a nurse at City Hospital. "I was on strike in Alberta in 1989 when the nurses successfully defied back-to-work legislation and won a better contract."
At Royal University Hospital (RUH), Lily Leung and Vivian Childe, with 19 and 11 years nursing experience respectively, said they couldn't believe they were being legislated back to work. "Some nurses in my ward were intimidated ," said Leung. "One felt she had to go back to work because her religion says they can't break the law. Others fear the consequences on their ability to travel to other countries where they have family," she said in reference to a court order enforcing the legislation.
Nurses on the picket lines described how deteriorating working conditions, including mandatory overtime, were affecting patient safety. The accumulated effects of cutbacks in health care throughout Canada, combined with a growing shortage of nurses, has substantially increased workload. Mandatory overtime is now a fact of life for nurses here. They are sometimes required to stay and work a second or even a third shift if a replacement cannot be found.
Most nurses, often with the help of their spouses and children, wrote their own placards for the rallies and picket lines. They often reflected humor with their deeply felt convictions about the justice of their struggle. Some read, "No tea break...no pee break" and "Put me in jail - I need a rest."
Unions throughout the country sent messages and financial contributions. The Canadian Union of Postal Employees, whose members were legislated back to work in November 1997 and are still without a contract, sent $50,000. Hundreds of workers from many different unions joined the picket lines.
Government says "22% is too much"
During the strike the Romanow government placed full-page
ads headlined "22% is too much" in the daily newspapers.
While some were influenced by this propaganda against the
nurses, others didn't buy it. Canadian Auto Workers Ahmed
Abdelwahab and Amr Ibrahim, who work at a local hotel, walked
the picket line. "We hope they get 100 percent of what
they're asking for," said Abdelwahab. "We don't think they're
asking for too much," added Ibrahim.
The April 13 monthly meeting of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 248P at Mitchell's Fine Foods in Saskatoon voted to send $2,000 to the SUN strike fund and to encourage members to join the picket lines. The local has 1,100 members. Six of them were on the line at RUH April 16, following their midnight shift.
As the strike entered its second week, pressure mounted on the nurses to return to work. A province-wide meeting of some 100 union officials of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, while critical of the government's strike breaking actions, shelved proposals to call a centralized mobilization of the federation's 100,000 members to back the nurses. This reflects the labor officialdom's reluctance to initiate action against the NDP government.
Officials of two other major unions in the health-care sector, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) with 10,000 members and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) with 12,000, signed tentative agreements with the SAHO during and before the nurses' strike, putting the government in a stronger position to impose a similar package on the nurses.
CUPE officials announced April 19, 61 percent of their members voted in favor of the offer, which provides for 2 percent yearly wage increases over three years. This is in accordance with wage guidelines set by the Saskatchewan government for all public workers. In order to avert an impending strike by 10,000 SEIU health-care workers during the nurses' strike, the government sweetened its offer by adding a 2.1 percent increase in benefits to come into effect April 2000.
In the case of SUN, nurses who work for the federal government in a veterans hospital recently won a $9,000 yearly pay increase as a result of a pay equity fight by their former union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada. SUN was demanding that all nurses should be brought up to this level - an increase of 22 percent over three years - to bring nurses' wages here closer to the level of those elsewhere and help reverse the tendency of nurses to leave the province.
The Saskatchewan New Democratic Party government's line against the nurses has angered many of the NDP's union supporters, some of whom are questioning whether their unions should continue to support the party.
According to a summary of the "framework agreement" published by SUN, the total monetary package represents a 13.7 percent increase over three years, more than the 7 percent the government had decreed in Bill 23 but far short of the 22 percent SUN members were fighting for. Furthermore, how much of this money will actually be translated into an increase in nurses' wages is still being negotiated.
Paul Kuling, SUN Saskatoon district president, said, "Although I'm somewhat disappointed, I think it's the best agreement we could get under the circumstances."
Jan Jonsson, a public-health nurse, said, "Our unity and our confidence in the union would've been strengthened more if the members could have come together as we did in the first days of the strike to decide whether to go back or not. Perhaps we could have stayed out longer and forced the government to come closer to meeting our demands."
A court hearing on April 19, which was to decide on the fines to be levied on SUN for failing to comply with a court injunction to respect Bill 23, was adjourned for a week at the request of the union's lawyer.
Roger Annis, a member of the International Association of Machinists in Vancouver, contributed to this article.