By Angela Hill

Health union on strike

May 9, 2011 | 10:05 AM

Wearing mittens and carrying coffee to guard against the cold, picketers were out along 15th Street East in Prince Albert this morning.

The Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan began provincial job action in the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region with 60 members striking in front of the Addictions Service’s building.

“Because the hospital is not in a high traffic area and we want to get our message out. We want people to realize what we are doing and why we are doing it. We really felt that on 15th street we were going to get a lot more traffic,” said Cathy Dickson, president of the association.

Dickson said they are keeping their strike respectful.

“If you’re supposed to go to work, you go to work. There are businesses in the (strike) area and we told the picketers to stay away from those businesses, to be respectful of those absolutely,” she said.

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The health region has 192 health sciences employees, of those about 40 per cent are considered essential.

“We have deemed about 40 per cent of health science staff members within our region as essential, under essential services legislation, and those employees who have been deemed essential are at work today,” said Doug Dahl, communications officer for the health region.

When it comes to future action, the union is holding their cards close .

“We do know but we are not actually saying. We are trying to keep that confidential so we can have a bit of a surprise, a surprise element,” Dickson said.

Today’s appointments for patients and clients are being either cancelled or rebooked by the health region this morning said Dahl.

“The region will be contacting patients and community services clients who have appointments scheduled for staff who are not available because of the job action. This will include areas, such as mental health, addictions, therapies, dieticians, home-care assessors and public health inspectors,” he said.

“We do encourage the public to call their respective health professionals office ahead of time to ensure the service is available on that day.”

The region has a contingency plan in place to respond to the job action, making sure people have access to basic emergent services as safely as possible within our available staffing resources, Dahl said.

He said the health region will be closely monitoring the status of negotiations between SAHO and HSAS.

As job action continues the association will release more information each morning. Check with paNOW to learn more each day. Updates will also be available on the health region’s website.

See related:
Job action to begin in Prince Albert Parkland Health Region (including a list of affected areas)

ahill@panow.com