Union is angry about government move to share health services

The B.C. government is "tossing a time bomb" into court-forced negotiations between the province and health-care unions, a spokesman for the Hospital Employees Union claimed Friday.

The union said the government has been secretly working for months on an organization that would share health services and take away more union jobs in favour of privatization.

"If this is good faith negotiations, we don't know what bad faith looks like," said Judy Darcy of the Hospital Employees Union.

"We feel completely sideswiped in the middle of very complicated and very difficult discussions about implementing the Supreme Court decision."

However B.C. Health Minister George Abbott said the government has been looking at the idea since first being elected six years ago, and the court didn't order the government to stop making efficiencies while it works through the issues with its unions.

Last June, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled some sections of the provincial government's controversial Bill 29 were unconstitutional and the court told the government to negotiate a solution with the unions.

Bill 29 allowed the government to tear up union contracts for thousands of health workers in the province.

Hours after the union put out a news release Friday complaining about the "secret" plan, a B.C. government news release was issued saying health authorities would look into the idea of sharing services such as warehousing, payroll, human resources and information technology.

Abbott calls the union's comments unfortunate hyperbole.

"First of all, I don't believe we're aggravating the situation," he said in an interview. "I think that in fact, what we are doing is a matter of common sense."

The new Health Authority Shared Services organization will conduct a feasibility study and look at business cases with the goal of saving health-care dollars and redirecting the savings to benefit patient care.

Darcy said her union's members are experts in bringing about efficiencies in delivering services and the union doesn't quarrel with saving money.

"We do take issue with creating a new provincial bureaucracy and laying ground work, we believe, for privatization of these services," she said.

Abbott said the union should not be worried about job loss.

"If the thesis that is being advanced here is that somehow there aren't going to be as many jobs in the health-care sector because of this, they're wrong," the minister said.

The government said the information was going out in the midst of good-faith bargaining with the Facilities Bargaining Association, a collection of health-care unions including the Hospital Employees Union.

But Darcy said informing the unions just days ago about the shared-services plan that would affect their job security when government has been working on it for months is not good faith.

"One of the things the Supreme Court was most pointed about was there was a complete lack of consultation before they enacted legislation (Bill 29)," she said.

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Union is angry about government move to share health services