This Just In From Nova Scotia

[NotReady4PrimeTime]

The Nova Scotia government has just announced that they have scrapped Bill 68, the bill with which they were attempting to deny health care workers the right to strike and the right to arbitration. The nurses and other health care workers had threatened a mass resignation to get around the new law. They set a goal of 75% participation, and earlier today, they achieved that, with nurses and others signing resignation letters which would have been effective two weeks hence. The threat worked!! The idea developed from a statement made in the media by one very fed-up nurse who said, "Okay, fine. I'll just quit. I can go anywhere and have a job the minute I walk through the door." The province was scramblng over the last couple of days trying to arrange transfers to hospitals in other provinces and some eastern seaboard states. When it became obvious that no one else had the room or the desire to take these patients, they had to cave in. Hooray! Maybe some of ther rest of us could take a page out of their book and plan our own resignation campaign...

[voskamp]

congrats Nova Scotia! That is good news for the Nova Scotia Health Care. Recently there where strikes in my country (the netherlands) For better wages and work circumstances in the hospitals. Hospitals througout the whole country united in a marathon strike. Only one hospital told the nurses that when they participated in the strikes, they would be cut on there wages. Surrounding hospitals imediatly replied by advertising that they had plenty jobs for nurses and didnt cut wages during strikes. That hospital lost many good nurses!

[-jt]

Why do you persist in refusing to recognize the accomplishments of unified nurses? This was not about individual nurses deciding to just quit. It was a union effort - a COLLECTIVE job action by organized nurses. It was not a vote for a strike - it was a "vote" to PRESERVE THE RIGHT TO strike. It was all about unity & being organized into a union & not allowing a govt to eliminate your union rights.

The province, in taking away the nurses right to strike was eroding their bargaining power & the union nurses did not stand for it. With their union, the nurses co-ordinated a unified job action that beat the province at its own game.

Thats like all the nurses in a whole US State being unionized & all walking out at the same time. It would never happen here, though. Too many US nurses are still in denial.

[darby]

horray for that remark,denial is what the whole us health care system is and will be,until we do what you did in nova scotia recently, i am sick of refugees coming over here buying us health care companies and stepping on us nurses,pakistani, india owned companies are working nurses here in new orleans for what i made on east coast in1975,lets get real follow the nurses in nova scotia and let them go back to pakistan broke, not with usa dollar signs in their eyes.think about it and then have the intestinal fortitude to say or do,how many rich nurses are working today........darby

[-jt]

these nurse have their employers by the balls with a vise locked grip and their employers know it and our powerless to do anything about it except to give in to any of their demands......

Now these nurses are in a position of setting the rules that their employers will follow and not the other way around. ........... They did not lobby their congressional representatives or senators. They did not gather on the steps of their government and hope for attention. They did not run campaigns trying to educate the public. In fact they bypassed all of this by taking actions on>>

Bypassed it??? Maybe you just missed all the public educating they did & newspaper articles, & speeches by their govt representatives or maybe you are just not talking about the same topic we are - cause it sure doesnt sound like it.

You may have missed it but the nurses certainly did run a campaign with their union to get 75% or more of the nurses in their province to resign over the govt taking away their right to strike. This was not a threat of resignation over the terms of their contract not being agreed to. It doesnt look like it was about getting the employers to give in to their demands or even their negotiations. It was all about losing the right to strike. THATS whats they were resigning over. When the govt dropped its plans for making that law, the nurses & their union held off the resignations. Now they can get down to negotiations on an equal footing.

The recent posts & article links are all here somewhere for you to read & catch up on the details so you can get the story straight in your mind. Its very interesting reading.