A leaked presentation from the province’s biggest health authority contains never-before-seen details that have the BC Teachers Federation calling for a switch to hybrid learning in COVID-19 hot spots.
Photograph By Mark Rogers and Murray Mitchell
The first day of strike action by support staff at Thompson Rivers University Thursday ended with a mid-campus rally that drew a crowd of about 150 unionized workers and supporters.
Picket lines went up around the empty facilities building, and later around the Clocktower building that mainly houses administrative staff, said Lois Rugg, president of CUPE 4879 which represents 600 TRU support workers.
Those two sites were chosen because they weren t expected to disrupt classes, she said.
Members of TRU s student union and faculty association also joined in, as did representatives from the United Steel Workers and B.C. Government and Service Employees Union.
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B.C. kids aged 12 and older could receive their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine before the end of the school year, according to health officials.
Following Health Canada’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine for use in children as young as 12, B.C. will integrate them into the province’s vaccine rollout, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said Wednesday.
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“We’re working on how do we do that and how do we do it in the most efficient way possible,” she said. “There’s lots of possibilities, including making sure we can get that done prior to June.”
But she added that they are not necessarily surprising. COVID-19 variants, which arrived in B.C. at the end of 2020, have been found to be more contagious than the original strain.
And while B.C. made it easier for workers to receive compensation by adding COVID-19 as a presumptive occupational illness last summer in other words, workers are presumed to have been infected at work if they are in a higher-risk industry unless there is contradicting evidence Skidmore said these figures again highlight the need to stop the spread in the first place.
To her, the solution is obvious and long-standing: paid sick days.