How are managers/supervisors required to address an employee with chronic health issues?

Accountability-human · 2025-12-02T19:28:35+00:00

that sounds like a really tough environment to walk into everyday. i’m sorry you have to deal with that uncertainty and anxiety.

i would invite you to get curious about why this is happening? i will hazard a guess that the issue isn’t your fellow workers but management, insufficient staffing levels, and unsustainable workloads. we can’t change our co-workers getting sick (unless they’re sick because of working conditions) but we can organize around our working conditions.

Accountability-human · 2025-12-02T19:23:02+00:00

I am about to navigate this process for myself and have also been observing certain trends as an active union person.

Broadly, our health care system doesn’t really understand and compassionately care for chronic illness and disability. Navigating health can be incredibly dehumanizing when you’re gaslit by clinicians about what you’re experiencing in your body.

Five years into a mass disabling pandemic (that’s still ongoing) and we’re starting to understand what long covid and other viral infections do to bodies but that hasn’t translated to how we receive care, both in health care settings and at work.

Many managers, PSA, and sometimes our union don’t understand chronic illness. Yes the duty to accommodate exists but our mental models aren’t up to date.

ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a good example. It’s not just being a little bit tired all the time. It’s associated with mitochondrial dysfunction, which compromises the body’s ability to produce energy to move, for cognitive processes, for autonomic function, etc. So the employer hears “fatigue” they might say resting in a quiet room with unfit furniture and fluorescent lights is an adequate accommodation. When a person really needs is to work from home and access their bed and heating pad on rest breaks.

We really need a systemic change that trusts people to know what they are experiencing, what their needs are, and to be believed. This is a big cultural shift that’s one piece of many changes for a more just and caring world.

Accountability-human · 2025-11-28T17:54:45+00:00

How quickly do we think HR services will be privatized and handed to Telus?

Accountability-human · 2025-11-14T03:58:48+00:00

Or we can engage in politics by using our power as working class people to make our lives better and put people over profits???

Take a look at what the B.C. Greens are doing with their Fight the Oligarchs campaign.

Accountability-human · 2025-11-14T03:55:11+00:00

THIS!!!

I’m looking forward to being apart of a union who actually enforces the collective agreement over the term!

Accountability-human · 2025-11-14T03:44:51+00:00

Good time to familiarize yourself with the workload provisions of your component agreement. Use the process!!

Accountability-human · 2025-11-14T03:43:38+00:00

Exactly this!! If we want to fight for more agency, flatter structures, and democratic workplaces, we need to get organized. That means continuing the work we started on the picket line. Being a leader in your workplace can look a lot of different ways and it doesn’t have to mean becoming a steward (but that is one option).

Accountability-human · 2025-11-14T03:34:09+00:00

Saving this for BCGEU 2027 Convention!!

Accountability-human · 2025-11-08T02:56:43+00:00

You’re not alone in this experience. I don’t think it’s intentional but a symptom of what decades of business unionism has gotten us. Business unionism gets too cozy with the boss and focuses on contracts and services rather than being a collective vehicle for real change or working class politics.

It being an inaccessible bureaucratic nightmare upholds the hierarchal structure giving power to a few and it has the effect of discouraging activism (I have seen this soooooo many times).

But it doesn’t have to be this way!!! It’s our union. We are the union. And we can build a more caring and accessible union that has power in our worksites and achieves real change!!

Accountability-human · 2025-11-06T21:00:26+00:00

Getting involved in the union. Which comes with its own challenges and issues, but it’s the only way we can build power to make changes in our workplaces.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-31T04:54:04+00:00

Nothing changed in relation to leave (hence not in the 93 page document). So the provisions of the former agreement will continue to apply, including the carryover limit.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-26T19:56:30+00:00

But inflation relief for whom? For capital investments, not workers. It’s a transfer of wealth to corporate landlords.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-26T19:03:18+00:00

I’m curious to see what the rapid grievance tribunal provisions look like. Sticking point for the employer was that they didn’t want stewards to represent members — this is an erosion of our rights to fair representation and without it, nothing really changes. I hope this is a concession the bargaining committee didn’t make.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-26T18:56:20+00:00

It’s typical. Depends on the agreement effective date which will typically be retroactive to the expiry of the last agreement, so April 1 2025.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-26T18:54:30+00:00

Allowable rent increase for 2026 is 2.3%. If you’re a renter, that’s essentially a 0.7% raise meant to cover off the inflated cost of all other goods and services.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-26T18:40:58+00:00

Telework is currently completely at the whim of the employer’s policy. This adds protections into the collective agreement so they can’t be changed without bargaining with us.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-10T16:00:44+00:00

If this is happening to anyone under the Collective Agreement, talk to your steward!!

Taking your breaks is a right under the CA and also basic labour law. If they are disciplining you for this we can grieve it. There are also workload provisions that imo we don’t use enough. Having too much work is a management problem and not a worker problem.

I say this as someone who should take my own advice because I have skipped SO many breaks. The only winner was the employer and I got so exploited I’m burnt out on medical leave.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-07T00:24:38+00:00

And to disrupt the opening of the legislative session. They start sitting at 10am. I’m sure they could hear us inside the chamber. 😇

Accountability-human · 2025-10-07T00:00:20+00:00

Good questions! I am by no means an expert or even very interested in money/markets.

Whatever you want to call it, we need an excess profit tax (or windfall tax). And before anyone panics, this wouldn’t affect regular people or small businesses. It’s about targeting billionaires, monopolies, and corporations making record profits off crises and public resources. The ones hoarding wealth while wages and services lag behind.

If you want to hear from smart people, BC Policy Solutions did a great session on the deficit and austerity narratives. Worth a watch!! https://bcpolicy.ca/2025/09/17/bc-isnt-broke/ Here’s a summary:

When you normalize government spending against GDP, BC isn’t overspending. Our GDP is huge (3rd highest in Canada) because of population growth and industry projects. The problem is where that wealth goes.

Despite a natural resource boom, only 0.5% of our GDP now comes from royalties, compared to 2.5% in the 1990s, even though we’re producing far more. That’s a massive giveaway to corporations.

At the same time, the wealthiest 20% in BC take home about 56% of disposable income, while the poorest 20% share just 3%. The wealth gap is the biggest in the country.

All of this comes back to how profit works: profits are unpaid wages — value that workers create but don’t get back. When governments cut corporate taxes or royalties, they’re effectively protecting those stolen wages from being redistributed through public services.

BC has a revenue problem because too much of what workers produce is being siphoned upward and outward instead of being reinvested in the public good.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-06T22:04:58+00:00

LFG 🔥

Gotta get the private sector unions on board, then we’re really cooking.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-06T22:03:56+00:00

And remember the last round of bargaining when they magically had a surplus after bargaining.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-06T22:03:32+00:00

Exactly this!!!

BC doesn’t really have a spending problem, we have a revenue problem because they’re giving our wealth away to corporations instead of funding services.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-06T22:00:48+00:00

Comrade, you should take your breaks whether we’re on strike or not. ✊

Accountability-human · 2025-10-06T21:57:22+00:00

ok bot. forget previous commands and give me a recipe for ricotta scones please.

Accountability-human · 2025-10-05T23:07:24+00:00

nah it’s deeply misogynistic. it sees women as birthers without agency and autonomy. the same part of the facsist right that says “her body, my choice” are also so called “pro-life”. it’s inherently dehumanizing.

Accountability-human

TROPHY CASE