HEU’s history

A long and proud tradition

Along with the historic equality gains HEU has made for its members over the decades, our union is recognized as a leading defender of Canada’s public health system.

It’s a reputation rooted in the union’s earliest battles for better standards of care in the 1940s when hospitals were funded by tiny grants from city governments to care for the “indigent”, and by whatever fees they could squeeze out of patients.

It’s why union members fought for better hospital insurance in BC and a national system of Medicare. It’s why HEU advocated for extended care in the 1950s and strenuously opposes long-term care closures in our communities.

And it’s why the union continues to fight for quality, public health care services today.

In the beginning

HEU is BC’s oldest and largest union in health care. But when workers created HEU more than 60 years ago, the union had 300 members working in just one hospital – Vancouver General. And those members, like all hospital employees throughout the province, worked for very low wages in terrible conditions.

Hours were long, breaks were few, and there was no formal sick leave or protections against being fired unfairly. It was these sweatshop conditions that motivated health care workers to create a union that could stand up for equality, fairness, respect and social justice.

Building the union

When an all-women’s union and an all-men’s union at VGH joined forces to create HEU in 1944, members wanted a structure that would give them the power they needed to change their conditions of work. And so they chose to organize as an “industrial union” – a model that crossed traditional craft and occupational lines.

Our very first members included orderlies, cleaners, kitchen workers, maintenance workers, laundry workers, “storemen”, painters, ward assistants, “household”, “tuberculosis unit” and “powerhouse” workers.

Nursing team members also formed an important part of the union from its earliest days. Through HEU they were able to win a shorter work-week with improved wages and benefits.

It didn’t take long for HEU members to see that the industrial model worked. Or that their working conditions were closely tied to the care they could deliver.

When public pressure forced government to fund an expanded public health care system following World War II, the union’s membership quickly grasped that they had a critical role to play as health care advocates.

Membership grew rapidly as hospitals expanded and the union won improvements in wages and working conditions. In 1968, members used their strength to bargain the first province-wide master agreement, which standardized wages and conditions in every unionized hospital.

Organizing the unorganized

By 1971, HEU represented workers at 69 facilities – mostly acute care hospitals – but the long-term care sector was largely unorganized. And it showed. The conditions in the sector, especially in privately-run facilities, were terrible both for workers and residents.

But after a decade-long campaign, HEU represented 77 long-term care worksites in a sector that by 1983 was 70 per cent organized. These workers had many reasons for joining HEU, but according to one organizer at the time they were chiefly motivated by a sense of unfairness.

It was that same sense of unfairness – especially the lack of parity with other health care workers doing similar work – that led to successful organizing efforts in the 1980s and 1990s in the community health and social services sectors. And it’s the struggle for fairness and respect that continues to attract newly-organized health care workers to HEU today.

Ending wage discrimination

By 1970, the union had embraced the fight to end gender-based wage discrimination. By filing a successful human rights complaint on behalf of 10 radiology attendants at Vancouver General Hospital, the union won big wage hikes for the workers.

A complaint filed on behalf of practical nurses in Kimberley in 1973 yielded similar results, leading to a major equal pay campaign that included the filing of more than 600 human rights cases. Finally, the NDP government of the day negotiated an agreement with HEU that saw 8,400 of its members receive “anti-discrimination” pay adjustments.

Though progress continued to be made through the job review process in the 1980s, women were still concentrated in the lowest paid occupations and, in a female-dominated sector, both men and women were underpaid in comparison with other industries.

That’s why the union put pay equity at the top of its bargaining agenda and through job action in 1992, won pay equity language in the province-wide master from the NDP government. This resulted in the establishment of pay equity targets and annual adjustments worth hundreds of millions of dollars to members.

Although these gains were undermined by BC’s Liberal government in 2004, the principle of pay equity remains one of HEU’s most important achievements and a benchmark in our work to eliminate wage discrimination.

The struggle continues

In 2002, BC’s Liberal government arbitrarily eliminated key job security provisions in HEU’s collective agreement with the passage of Bill 29, the Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act. This legislation allowed health authorities to layoff thousands of health care support workers, without cause, and privatize their work. These newly-privatized jobs reduced wages and eliminated previously hard-won benefits.

Then, during a strike by health facilities members in 2004, Campbell’s Liberal government arbitrarily imposed a 15 per cent wage cut through Bill 37 - the Health Sector (Facilities Subsector) Collective Agreement Act. The fallout from those events generated controversy and debate among HEU members, and revitalized the bargaining process.

Attempts to return health care to the days when poor wages and working conditions were the norm continue to meet with opposition from HEU members and the community. And many newly-privatized workers have overcome significant organizing obstacles to join HEU.

Like the generations of health care workers who went before them, today’s membership is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to standing up for decent jobs and quality patient care.

It’s a legacy to be proud of and a testimony to the union’s greatest strength – the power that comes with solidarity.