2016 was an incredibly busy, demanding year that saw the ratification of a landmark new collective agreement for the majority of our members. Major gains and important new language changes make it a marquee achievement that we should be tremendously proud of. Is it perfect? Certainly not. Nevertheless, it is an historic victory made possible through the engagement and unity of our membership.

An exciting new provision, the Nursing Policy Secretariat is evidence of nurses’ growing role as stakeholders in the health care system. The Secretariat will be a vehicle to widen the scope of practice for nurses of all designations.

I am also pleased that the Pharmacare tie-in benefit was fixed in this contract, with about 90% of the old coverages restored. During negotiations, we were acutely aware of how important this benefit is to BCNU members, and we fought strongly for its restoration.

Another key contract advance: $2 million to address the increasingly dire shortage of nurses in rural areas. The new fund enables us to provide education and various supports for rural nurses — although much more will be needed to bridge the alarming gaps in capacity in rural BC.

BCNU teams now turn to the hard work of language interpretation and implementation. This work is ongoing, even as we prepare for the next round of bargaining in 2018.

The ongoing staffing crisis continued to dominate BCNU’s media outreach, and the situation remains unacceptable — the result of poor planning and deficiencies in the education of new nurses. We remain committed to working on these challenges with health authorities.

The court case against Dr. Brian Day’s private health clinic has run well over the expected six months. However, we will continue to support the case as an expression of BCNU’s resolve to stand up for publicly funded health care in BC.

This year, we also stood up strongly against workplace violence. Our BCNU campaign to stop violence inflicted on nurses is my new number one priority. Beyond our efforts in BC, we must also strive to make assaulting a nurse a felony right across Canada.

The creation of our new Professional Practice and Advocacy Department strengthens BCNU’s role as the professional voice of nursing. Now up and running, the department includes two professional practice officers educating and assisting nurses on professional practice throughout BC.

Looking ahead, our priorities remain the issues members care most about: Staffing, workload, safe workplaces, and implementing the agreement. At every table, whether we are negotiating or advocating, our members are always the focus. I sincerely thank all members who contributed to our successes this year. I’m already excited to see what the people of BCNU can do in 2017.

Our transformative new collective agreement was the highlight of 2016. All the optimism and energy that we saw early in the year kept us going, through a hugely challenging period, to a worthwhile reward: The unification of our members into a single contract, achieved with an historic ratification vote. To me, this demonstrates the growing professionalism and unity within our organization.

Representing community nurses in bargaining, the highlight was our victory in new funding for communication technology — an area where the employer has really fallen down. The result? $2 million to equip community nurses across the province with ‘smart’ devices that will help them stay safe and enable better patient care.

With these and other gains, we have more opportunity to implement change at the very highest level, and make significant improvements in care delivery in BC. We have evolved as professionals who know how to use our voice to influence change.

As Vice-President, I am BCNU’s chief lobbyist, working with a team of regional representatives from all across BC. Team members met regularly with MLAs, raising issues such as workload and violence, the opiate crisis, rural health care, education, barriers facing internationally educated nurses and economic challenges for nurses in urban areas. BCNU’s lobbying activities strongly reflected the mandate to protect and foster our sense of professionalism.

Earlier in the year, I co-chaired a stakeholder team with health authorities to update the Resident Assessment Instrument, a tool used by home care nurses to assess clients for placement in long term care facilities or home care services. It’s the first provincial policy ever to be reviewed in collaboration with the union. The next phase? Ensuring the policy is followed.

As chair of the Human Rights and Equity Caucuses, I worked with a diverse group of members in 2016, and continue to enjoy watching the leadership grow and develop within these caucuses.

Personally, I am very grateful for the work our members allow me to do, and proud of the leadership we have seen in 2016. I’m grateful there is a union with such depth and breadth of knowledge to work on behalf of the nurses of BC.

In 2017 I will be working with the new Policy Secretariat, as well as the Nurse Staffing Secretariat, where we are developing a health human resource plan for the province, one that ensures an appropriate number of nurses in the future. It may not help today’s acute shortages, but as our population ages and nurses are retiring, we must stay focused on recruiting and retaining new nurses. Professionally, it’s our obligation — and our opportunity.

As Treasurer, I believe a strong financial footing is essential to our success as a union. When I took on this role in September, I promised Council and the Finance Committee that I would work hard to ensure a well-managed budget and to keep members fully informed about BCNU’s finances.

In 2016, the Finance Committee continued to advance accountability and transparency in our finances and budgeting. A key priority for me was to ensure Council had the ability to influence the budget at the outset of the process. As we developed our 2017 budget, we focused on striking the right balance between safeguarding members’ dues and funding members’ priorities.
A key principle is that we start by ensuring strong performance on core services, such as health and safety, bargaining, and ongoing labour relations. Council created our new Professional Practice and Advocacy Department, and $1 million was earmarked for our province-wide violence prevention campaign in 2017.

While ensuring core services and more were delivered, we retained a large portion of unused funds in the budget — money that will top up our defence fund. I was very pleased to see the budget increase for steward education and support. It will now be easier for seasoned stewards to support and mentor our new stewards.

Widespread nursing workload remains a serious challenge and a priority for our labour relations teams. There are not enough nurses hired into permanent positions to meet demands, and addressing the ongoing toll must be a priority. With the health and well-being of so many members at stake, Council will utilize any means possible to advocate for fair working conditions and to stand up for the public health care system we believe in.

It has been my privilege to serve on both the Bursary and New Nurses Assistance Committees, where the priority for the New Nurse Assistance Committee is help for members who have failed their national exam. As we have seen, the success rate is lower than the previous national exam. There is a major problem when those who are in practice already, and have done well in school, are not passing this exam. We will persist in advocating for change. We need those nurses, and we will support them to ensure they pass.

As Treasurer, I love explaining the union’s annual budget to members. Did you know it’s nearly $47 million? Everywhere I go, I bring a pie-chart that shows where all that money goes — that chart is the proof that BCNU is focused on the real priorities of members.

I am proud to take over the strong financial management of our previous Treasurer, Mabel Tung, and will continue to ensure that we maintain our strong financial position.

As Executive Councillor, my time was divided between our Health and Safety and Mental Health portfolios, areas where we saw innovation and advancement through important new language in our collective agreement.

Some innovations were complex, so as a Council we invested extra time and energy reaching out to members to ensure that everyone understood the gains that had been negotiated in the new contract.

Funding was negotiated for our Personal Resilience Workshop to continue. Nurses who have experienced it tell me the workshop has helped them address a range of health, safety and mental health challenges on the job. In addition, we negotiated that members must be relieved from work to participate in Critical Incident Stress Debriefings should they wish to and if the debriefing takes place on a day off members must be paid the appropriate rate of pay.
It is also now mandatory for employers to comply with the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) standard for workplace psychological health and safety. This standard has the potential to transform the health care workplace. While compliance is still voluntary elsewhere in Canada, health authorities in BC are now required to assess workplaces according to 13 organizational factors. While it will likely take five to 10 years to fully implement, I believe this provision is a significant gain for BCNU.

Article 32 of the new contract is also a turning point, requiring the employer and BCNU to jointly commit to “establishing a culture of safety and reduction of violence at every workplace.” That may sound like a “motherhood” statement, but what makes it so significant is that the employer did not want to include it. We persuaded them —and now we have an opportunity for some authentic dialogue, the first step to change.

Significant, too, is the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) we negotiated on workplace violence prevention. In consultation with the Nurses Bargaining Association (NBA) and other stakeholders, the Ministry of Health is drafting a policy framework to provide clear direction to the health authorities on their accountability for violence prevention. I hope we will see a more systematic approach to setting standards, and the provision of security and safety officers. Define the standard, do the necessary training, then hold everybody to it.

Finally, I want to mention the impacts of BC’s devastating opiate overdose crisis. My challenge has been trying to find meaningful ways to support nurses who are struggling on so many levels to cope. It continues to be a deeply distressing reality, particularly for those on the front line. Let’s hope 2017 brings better news —not only in this crisis, but everywhere that nurses continue to face some of public health care’s most daunting challenges.

My priority as Executive Councillor this year was pensions — more specifically, communicating about pensions. I was pleased to take part in a great deal of outreach about BCNU members’ pensions and benefits. In 2016, I provided over 40 pension workshops to more than 1500 members across BC.

The main message? Learn about your pension early in your career. Don’t worry, members’ pensions are well managed and well funded and will be there for you when you retire. On average, members’ pensions are funded 75% by investment returns, 12.5% from employee contributions and 12.5% from employer contributions. Make no mistake, members have earned their pensions by paying for them throughout their career.

I am proud that BCNU provides this useful workshop which is available to all members. It’s often the first experience members have had with a BCNU sponsored workshop. It is so important for all members to understand their pension entitlements. In 2016 a workshop for members early in their career was introduced with great success. And, as a bonus, it’s the perfect first step for some members to engage with their union on other issues.

The Retiree Benefit Program, negotiated through the NBA in 2006 is now in a position to consider improving benefits offered through that program and also utilize some of the value of the program to enhance benefits for active members. The Retiree Benefit Committee is working with legal, financial and actuarial professionals to ensure benefit improvements will be sustainable for the long term.

Thinking back to what stands out in 2016, it was definitely concluding the NBA collective agreement. As well, I believe we all found the staff job action affecting BCNU operations very difficult. In other ways, it was also a rewarding time, a challenge that brought out the best in our leadership, excluded staff and membership. We worked well together and although things were not business as normal, we managed to provide a pretty high level of service to members. That sense of unity gives us new energy to keep advancing in all our priority activities.

I strongly believe that in 2016, BCNU became stronger, and a better advocate than ever, representing the professional voice for all nurses and supporting our members in the challenges they face in difficult work environments.

On a personal note, I am retiring in September. I look forward to mentoring and supporting the next Executive Councillor moving into this role and hope to stay involved as a retiree. It has been an honour to serve BCNU members, and I thank you sincerely for your support.

For me, the highlight of 2016 was the historic voter turnout for the ratification of our collective agreement. Eighty-five per cent of our members supported ratification of a contract that, for the first time, unites LPNs, RPNs, and RNs — an outstanding achievement for our organization.
As Executive Director, government relations continues to be a high priority. We work hard to ensure nurses’ voices are heard in public and health policy circles. We take pride in making sure our positions are well researched, and professionally presented —and that we communicate clearly, in a transparent, business-like manner.

Equally important in 2016 were our efforts to support nurses as a professionally licensed group. The new Professional Practice and Advocacy Department, an initiative led by President Gayle Duteil to foster the professionalism of nursing, is helping to accelerate those efforts. The department reflects our focus on advancing the profession and enhancing our research capacity.
We are proud of the creative ways our team overcame challenges at the bargaining table and beyond. We achieved a number of labour relations victories this year, including notable arbitration awards. One award resulted in $10 million that will be put towards specialty training, community nurse technology upgrades, a new program at Vancouver Community College, and damages for member grievances.

Despite the all-encompassing nature of contract negotiations, we launched new initiatives — such as our anti-violence campaign. We invested considerable time and energy in drafting new language for the collective agreement, creating and launching an advertising campaign, and calling on MLAs and candidates to commit to reducing violence in the workplace.
The year was also notable for the job action affecting BCNU’s internal operations — the first in our organization in 14 years. While some hard feelings remain, we are working to address them. I am grateful to our exceptional staff and leadership who went the extra mile every day to maintain high levels of member service during a difficult period.

We are now focused on the upcoming election process, where members have the opportunity to vote on leadership positions. We will strive to ensure a fully professional and democratic process, with a healthy level of discussion and debate. We will also be pressing forward with our violence awareness campaign — just one of many steps we are taking to position the union for success at the bargaining table in 2018.

Beyond any one achievement, it is important to emphasize that in 2016 BCNU demonstrated that it is an organization where the leadership is always willing to take on new challenges. We will always do what it takes to fight for the people of BCNU.