Release of Study on Impact of Health Care Privatization on Women's Work, Pay Equity in B.C.

Health privatization hurts women

Hospital Employees' Union releases study on impact of health privatization on women's work, pay equity

Hospital Employees' Union press conference

30 years of pay equity progress at risk from government’s health privatization plans – study

March 6, 2003, VANCOUVER: The B.C. government’s plans to privatize health care support services will turn back the clock on women’s wages to levels unseen since the late 1960s and put patient care at risk, according to a new study by Simon Fraser University economist Marjorie Griffin Cohen.

Commissioned by the Hospital Employees’ Union and released today, the study says that the B.C. government’s year-old contract-breaking legislation sets the stage for hospital support workers’ wages to “drop to the lowest pay scale in the country for every job category – and not by a few percentage points but by substantial amounts.” More than 85 per cent of HEU members – those workers targeted by the legislation – are women.

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Click on the links below for webcast of press conference.

NEW! Composite video, from Shaw TV broadcast POSTED MONDAY MARCH 10 - RT: 5:00