Ambulance Paramedics of British Columbia CUPE 873

Recently, the Fernie Station of the BC Ambulance Service (BCAS) received a long feared memo outlining BC Ambulance’s latest plans regarding the future of services provided to the community of Fernie. B.C. Ambulance’s Fernie station staff members have been waiting for a decision to come from BCAS about the fate of our two full time positions…one full time regular position, and one full time Unit Chief position. The battle we have been fighting to keep both those full time positions, came to a bitter end on February 7, 2008, as a memo came through our station fax outlining B.C. Ambulance’s decision to delete our regular full time position. The sting of this decision was made a bit lighter with the news that they were finally going to fill our full time Unit Chief position. However, as of this writing, we still have not seen an official Provincial posting put out for the Unit Chief position, so whether or not the BCAS intends to actually fill those positions, remains to be seen.

What does this mean for the community? It shows us that the community of Fernie is not a priority for BCAS and this is simply not acceptable to our ambulance crew, or to the community at large. It also means that when the full time unit chief position is posted provincially and at long last filled, we will have our one and only full time staff member available during the daytime hours from Tuesday through Friday…that’s right…only four days a week. As for the other three days, the part time on-call crew will be kept on standby at the station, while administrative duties are left undone, and the voice a full time member could use to better our station, our crew, and our service, will be left unheard. We, as a union and more importantly the crew serving this community have been awaiting a decision from BC Ambulance on the fate of these two positions for many years, and needless to say the outcome is not at all favourable.

Our Full Time Unit chief retired in 2000, and his position wasn’t filled until over a year later in the latter half of 2001. This, the second Unit Chief of Fernie station moved on after 5 years in November of 2006 and we have yet to see a posting for this position. For the last 2 years our unit chief position has been filled by a part timer, a dedicated member of our community trying to help out without proper training or guidance. Our part time acting unit chief has been doing a fantastic job with her limited resources but when it comes right down to it, she never should have been put in the position and BCAS should have posted the position as soon as it became vacant. Almost three out of the last eight years have seen our station without a full time unit chief and even more dubious is the history behind our full time position. Our full time position has been vacant for 6 years now ever since our previous full timer left the service in 2002. The part time crew members have been diligently filling in the full time shift in hopes of a full timer finally returning to our station. With these recent developments, our efforts, our concerns, and our community, see to have all been forgotten.

Another result of BCAS cutbacks is a change in our shift pattern from a Bravo pattern to an Echo pattern. This means we now switch to a 14 hour night shift where standby crews will be required to be at the station from 5 pm to 7 am, and our day shift is reduced to a 10 hour shift from 0700 to 500pm. Our crews do not get paid overtime for these long hours due to the fact we are just carrying a pager, or on standby, both of which provide for stipends which are not considered wages. Crew fatigue and over work are serious concerns, but unfortunately, with our current staffing level, crew members are forced to take themselves out of service due to fatigue, or they have worked more than 16 hours in a twenty four hour period. This often results in ambulances being shut down, which in turn often leaves other guilt stricken paramedics to continue working to prevent Ambulances from being shut down.

Another station in the East Kootenay was allowed to keep their old preferred Bravo shift pattern, leaving us wondering why Fernie, who was ordered to change to the Echo shift pattern, continues to be on the proverbial chopping block.

With both of our full time positions filled our staffing shortages would be eased, our community would benefit from having full time staff at our local station 7 days a week and there would be someone on hand to provide leadership, guidance and to act as a mentor to both new staff coming on board and seasoned staff looking to better their skills. The BC Ambulance service is not keeping pace with our community growth; as population and call volume go up you would expect staffing to go up as well but we have fewer staff now than we did 8 years ago. Cost of living has also increased but paramedic wages have not, and again the BCAS is not keeping pace and the lack of competitiveness means qualified paramedics are moving elsewhere.
In 2000 we had two full time employees at our station, where today we have no full timers at all and the second position has now been deleted. Our call volumes are going up every year, and to quote our station statistics in 1997 our station responded to 649 calls, in 2001 we responded to 1050 calls, in 2006 we responded to 1249 calls, and in 2007 we responded to just over 1500 calls. The upwards trend is continuing in 2008 and the fact that we don’t have the crew required to answer these calls should be of concern to everyone. As paramedics we want to serve our community, we want to help people and above all else we are very proud of the job that we do which is why it is so frustrating to have our tools and our resources taken away. If we cannot keep part time staff at our station we cannot answer your call for help.

BC Ambulance offers no incentive for people interested in a job as a paramedic and constantly reminds the staff that they do have, that this is a part time job (with the exception of a precious few full time positions in our region that local part timers will never have the ability to move into under our current policies). Many paramedics spend countless hours on call packing a pager and standing by at our stations to ensure ambulances are manned. Many of our so-called part time staff work well beyond full time hours without the benefits of holding a full time position. On average a part time crewmember at Fernie station is scheduled for 16 shifts a month, which works out to be 384 hours of scheduled shifts each month. Compare that to the average full time workweek of 40 hours, which translates to 160 hours a month. This means our so-called part timers are working almost 2.5 times the hours a full time worker would work. It is dedication that keeps our ambulances on the streets, and the dedication among the Fernie crew is above and beyond the call of duty and well beyond the definition of ‘part time’.

The long hours of scheduled work our part timers put in doesn’t include the times that calls require crew to work beyond the time their shift was scheduled to end. Our part time crew members also do not qualify for any medical benefits until they achieve 6 years of service and then must work a minimum amount of shifts each year to continue receiving benefits. We pack pagers for $2 an hour and while on standby at the station we are paid $10/hr and only get paid our full wages when we are responding to a call for help. This is one of the reasons it is hard to attract paramedics and even harder to keep the ones we have here in small communities like Fernie. Looking back at the history of Fernie station there are some more staggering statistics which should grab the attention of our community. In the past 8 years we have had one crew member retire and 19 crew members have come and gone through our station doors. Some members used Fernie as a stepping stone to start their career, while other members have moved onto other things, but they all took knowledge and experience with them that our community now has to go without. We find it staggering that in only 8 years, 19 crew members have had to leave our town…and our station. For some, the cost of living was too high, and they simply couldn’t afford to stay here, while for others the desire to become full time lead them to the coast, and others changed careers entirely. This exodus is and was a direct reflection of BCAS’s recruitment and retention efforts. In 2000, we had two full time members and twenty part time, but now, with call volumes drastically on the rise, we have lost our full time positions, but we were able to keep our part time level at twenty, only 14 of whom regularly take shifts. Nevertheless, we have two paramedics who are leaving shortly, with no replacement paramedics interested in coming to Fernie. This translates that as of April 1st, we will have eighteen part time staff, no full time Unit chief, and no full time paramedics…and coupled with the ever increasing call volume, it becomes a situations our community should find alarming.

As paramedics we have chosen our career, and we choose to serve the community of Fernie, a community that is our home. The shocking fact is the community didn’t choose to lose highly trained and experienced full time Paramedics, the community didn’t make the decision to have Fernie station a revolving door for paramedics and the community doesn’t choose to have an ambulance go unstaffed and what is worse is that most of the time the community doesn’t know about what is going on with the ambulance service and few people realize just how critical the situation is in Fernie and the Elk Valley.

As a crew we are frustrated and as a community we should all be extremely concerned at the trends the BCAS is setting. Things need to change for the better because ultimately it is the community, and the patients who feel the impact of the cutbacks and mismanagement of the BCAS and its resources.