When you visit the B.C. Legislature – and I heartily recommend you do so! – you must pass through a metal detector and put any bags and belongings through it. Any sharp objects, such as a Swiss army knife, must be given to security for the duration of your visit.
Once inside, you will see more than a dozen friendly security personnel and some of them are armed with guns. They are fully trained police officers who once worked with other police detachments.
It’s an impressive security system, and it makes the legislature arguably one of the most secure and safest buildings in B.C., outside of police stations themselves. Those who work in the legislature are grateful for it.
Which brings me to the report by two special mediators that ended the B.C. Nurses Union strike and sent the dispute to binding arbitration. That report paints a very different picture of workplaces much more dangerous than the legislature is, with far less security present.
While much attention has been paid to the large gap that exists between what the employer was offering as a wage increase – 14 per cent over four years – versus what the union was asking – 32 per cent over the same period – the mediators’ report focused on another issue entirely: violence in the workplace.
Yes, the 32 per cent request was simply not realistic. I think the union negotiating team, which had earlier recommended accepting the 14 per cent increase only to see the union membership vote it down, came up with the absurdly lofty number to appease that membership, knowing full well it would never fly and the whole thing would go to arbitration.
But two other numbers in the report stood out more to me: 16 and 46.
As in, every 16 hours a B.C. nurse goes off on a WorkSafeBC claim because of violence at work and about 46 nurses a month suffer injuries from violence in the workplace.
Those are truly astonishing and, frankly, alarming statistics.
Here is another number that may surprise you: there are now 780 “relational security officers” working in B.C. health facilities. When those positions were first created in 2022, there were 320 of them.
Independent Surrey Cloverdale MLA Elenore Sturko, a former RCMP officer, has raised the issue of workplace safety in B.C. health facilities in the legislature on numerous occasions and has long called for much better training for those responsible for that safety.
And she can’t help but contrast the legislature situation to one at a hospital.
“I like our security and protection for sure, but tourists and schoolchildren are the people we see most often, not people having psychotic breaks who may be walking around with knives or other weapons,” she told me.
“Nurses work in much more dangerous places than where I work. They need much better protection,” she said.
The mediators, Vince Ready and Amanda Rogers, have strongly recommended the health ministry conduct a “meaningful” and comprehensive review of workplace safety with the goal of vastly improving the situation.
Hopefully that happens, and hopefully it will lead to those two numbers – 16 and 46 – coming down a whole lot.
Keith Baldrey is Global BC’s legislature bureau chief.
Keith.Baldrey@globalnews.ca
