The Report

The Report: April / May 2001 vol.22 num.2 by BRUCE WILKINS What is the scope of an employee's right to refuse overtime? Working people have many different attitudes towards working overtime. Some welcome overtime as the opportunity to put some more money in the bank. Others wish to accrue extra time off to tag on to that long-awaited vacation. Others...

The Report: April / May 2001 vol.22 num.2 by DAN KEETON Leslie Sofarelli Social Worker Intensive Care Unit, St. Paul's Hospital Leslie Sofarelli might rival some of the best gumshoes in the business with her success rate in tracking down long-lost relatives, but youd be hard-pressed to find a private investigator who could bring half the compassion to their work...

The Report: January / February 2001 vol.22 num.1 HSA is a member-run union governed by a Board of Directors. The Board is composed of one member elected from each of ten regions around the province, and a President elected by delegates at Annual Convention. When you elect your Regional Director, you are casting a vote for your representative who is...

The Report: January / February 2001 vol.22 num.1 by CINDY STEWART Whats it going to take? Hard work and determination on the part of each and every health professional that HSA represents. In mid-November, delegates to HSAs Paramedical Professional Bargaining Conference met to determine the priorities for HSAs10,000 health science professionals in the upcoming round of negotiations. The conference coincided...

The Report: January / February 2001 vol.22 num.1 by BRIAN ISBERG No matter how much the Capital Health Region or any other region amalgamates, consolidates, restructures, reorganizes or regionalizes, it will not get past the underlying fact that there are not enough health science professionals to continue providing quality patient care in the present environment - let alone in one...

The Report: January / February 2001 vol.22 num.1 by RICK LAMPSHIRE The collective bargaining process for health science professionals has begun. HSAs bargaining proposal conference held November 15 through 17 was a huge success; participants worked hard, and were prepared to make difficult decisions to identify the priority issues of our membership. We will present a tight, focused package to...

The Report: January / February 2001 vol.22 num.1 by SARAH O'LEARY Q: How will the new Employment Insurance provisions affect me? A: In the 2000 federal budget, the Liberal government introduced some changes to the Employment Insurance Act. Bill C-32: An Act to Implement Certain Provisions of the Budget was tabled in parliament on February 28, 2000. These changes will...

The Report: January / February 2001 vol.22 num.1 by YUKIE KURAHASHI Lori Scherer Ultrasound Technologist Mission Memorial Hospital Like many sonographers, Lori Scherer knew she wanted to pursue ultrasound "the minute" she walked into medical imaging. "I like sonography because I like people," she says. "I like the one-on-one contact with the patient, and I wish I had more opportunity...

The Report: January / February 2001 vol.22 num.1 Members identify workload, ergonomics as key issues by YUKIE KURAHASHI Every day, each cytotechnologist at the BC Cancer Agency's Cervical Cancer Screening Program scrutinizes 85 slides, with the knowledge that each slide may carry information that could profoundly affect the life of a woman somewhere in the province. The BC Cancer Agency's...

The Report: January / February 2001 vol.22 num.1 by RACHEL NOTLEY Medical radiation technologists tend to experience symptoms of respiratory illness at a higher rate than do physiotherapists. Thats the conclusion of a recent comparative study by researchers at UBC. The authors of the study, Helen Ward and Michelle Wymer, describe symptoms which include bronchial hyper-responsiveness, wheezing, shortness of breath...