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  • In 1944 the first social democratic government in North America was elected in the province of Saskatchewan. The new government of Premier Tommy Douglas intended to introduce plans to insure both medical and hospital services immediately following the election; however, because of financial limitations, it decided instead to establish a provincewide system of hospital insurance. The Saskatchewan Hospital Insurance Plan, established in 1947 and funded mainly from provincial tax revenue, provided free inpatient hospital care for all residents of the province. ...on July 1, 1962, the date the Medical Care Insurance Plan was to go into effect, more than 90 percent of the province's doctors withdrew their services. This strike, although relatively short–it only lasted twenty-three days–was very bitter....

  • In spite of the long-term existence of joint committees, injury rates appear to be increasing in the healthcare sector. The purpose of this study was to deliver and evaluate a province-wide joint committee (JC) education program for healthcare institutions BC. The joint committee education program was designed with input from labour and management representatives and expert advice from compensation, union, and human resources consultants. The training program was designed to: 1) ensure that committee members fully understood their roles and responsibilities as outlined under the Workers' Compensation Act and Regulations, 2) increase the problem solving skills of committee members, 3) improve the committee's ability in identifying and resolving health and safety concerns in their workplace. Between June and December 2000, 1,206 JC members, (employed at 262 different healthcare facilities), were trained. An evaluation survey, designed as a retrospective before and after study, to evaluate whether the JC training sessions had produced changes in committee functioning was conducted from 7 to 15 months after the training (during the period July 2001 to September 2001) by two trained telephone interviewers. While the level of JC functioning was quite high most institutions prior to training the evaluation survey found large and statistically significant improvements in JC functioning. A 39.5% increase in the proportion of respondents reporting “high” marks for JC effectiveness in identifying hazards and an increase of 50% reporting “high” marks for understanding the JCs role were observed. Increases in the proportion of respondents reporting “high” marks for accuracy of JC minutes, specificity of recommendations, and perhaps most importantly, degrees of cooperation among JC members were in the 20 percent range. IN conclusion this province-wide training of JC members in healthcare institutions increased the functioning of JCs in key areas.

  • Much research on precarious employment compares permanent workers with one or two other broadly-defined employment categories. We developed a more refined method of examining precariousness by defining current employment arrangements in terms of job characteristics. These employment arrangement categories were then compared in terms of socio-demographics and self-reported job insecurity. This investigation was based on a cross-sectional population-based survey of a random sample of 1,101 working Australians. Eight mutually exclusive employment categories were identified: Permanent Full-time (46.4%), Permanent Part-time (18.3%), Casual Full-time (2.7%), Casual Part-time (9.3%), Fixed Term Contract (2.1%), Labour Hire (3.6%), Own Account Self-employed (7.4%), and Other Self-employed (9.5%). These showed significant and coherent differences in job characteristics, socio-demographics and perceived job insecurity. These empirically-supported categories may provide a conceptual guide for government agencies, policy makers and researchers in areas including occupational health and safety, taxation, labour market regulations, the working poor, child poverty, benefit programs, industrial relations, and skills development.

Last update from database: 9/26/24, 4:12 AM (UTC)