"Vote for Change" Fund.

Please help support our BC Nurses' Union candidates Will Offley, Sharon Sharp and Mary Jean Lyth. They had been running in the election for the positions of president, vice-president, and treasurer. The BCNU candidates were removed from the ballot two days before voting started , in a non-transparent, intimidating manner, on the Sunday of a long weekend. BC nurses have now been stripped of their right to vote, with no free and fair election. As a result, our current leadership have been acclaimed and will each serve another three year term without a vote.

How has that leadership conducted itself? As per Will, He is being sued by Gayle Duteil.  BCNU is threatening a defamation suit against Offley, Sharp and Lyth. And even worse, look at how they treated Todd Decker, one of our executive councillor candidates. We have been told that Todd, a former BCNU staff member, was offered $35,000 if he agreed to withdraw from union politics for ten years. When he turned this down, his membership was blocked, and he was forced to go to the Labor Relations Board for an order to restore his membership rights. After winning the right to run, he was the subject of a serious breach of privacy when apparently an executive member posted his personal information on Facebook, including his home address, his home and cell phone numbers, his bank (and bank account number), his Surrey Memorial Hospital employee number and employee PIN number. The leadership denied this was a privacy breach, and refused even to apologize.

Please help support these candidates, and change this union. They have run to present BC nurses with another alternative -- reduced executive salaries, reintroduction of term limits for elected leaders, respectful relations with BCNU staff (instead of lockouts), democratization of the union and an end to the raiding of other unions. In doing this they state they have already run up legal bills of over $38,000 and now are being threatened with another suit being brought against them by BCNU. These candidates have been paying out of their own pockets to fight for the nurses, to be our voice. Please consider giving back to the people who are fighting so hard. Placing themselves in legal battles, paying their own legal fees. Taking every spare moment to dedicate themselves for the cause. We pay union fees, where is our vote?

Please help these activists win back their place on the ballot, so that BC nurses can have a real choice in 2017..