Our Work Matters 2009

Most people aren’t aware of the vital and diverse nature of HEU members’ work – in about 270 different job classifications – to provide patients, residents and clients with the best health care services possible under challenging circumstances.

That’s why in the fall of 2005, HEU launched the successful Our Work Matters! campaign to educate not only employers, politicians and the public, but also each other about the valuable contribution HEU members make to B.C.’s health care system every single day.

The seven occupational and sectoral conferences, which involved hundreds of HEU members, were followed by cross-occupational lobby teams meeting face-to-face with most provincial MLAs to carry the message further about their wide-ranging work.

HEU has five occupational job families in the facilities subsector: patient care, clerical, support, patient care technical, and trades and maintenance. (*In the 2006-2010 contract, the “technical” job family was created to include information systems, accounting supervisors, accountants, buyers, and medical records technicians. Due to numbers, some of these members attended the patient care technical or clerical conferences).

Bargaining preparations

On March 31, 2010, collective agreements for facilities, community health and community social services expire. In preparation for our next round of bargaining, HEU organized another series of sectoral and occupational bargaining conferences under the theme Our Work Matters!

These two-day conferences were an opportunity for members across the province to network, identify bargaining issues and priorities, and discuss issues specific to their occupational grouping.

The HEU Provincial Executive will submit bargaining priorities from each occupational conference to the Wage Policy Conference in November. This is in addition to bargaining demands submitted by locals.

Conference information: