V104Is36JUL19-2011

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Last Mountain

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Volume 104, No 36

Publishers Lance and Vicki Cornwell Box 340, Nokomis, SK. S0G 3R0

Serving The Last Mountain Area Since 1908

Kiddie Day fun at Strasbourg Spray Park

Kiddie Day was held at the Strasbourg Jubiliee Spray Park on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 13. The weather cooperated and everyone had a wonderful time. More photos on page 7.

Single copy price: $1.00

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

SGI faces possible strike action SGI says it has a comprehensive plan in place to ensure customer needs are met in the event of job action by the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union. The union served SGI with 48 hours strike notice late last week. “We are committed to the collective bargaining process and are still hopeful of reaching a resolution,” said Andrew Cartmell, President and CEO of SGI. “In the meantime, our customers remain our top priority. At the moment it continues to be business as usual at SGI, but if the union does undertake job action, we have a plan in place to ensure customer needs continue to be met. I want to assure our customers that we’re wellprepared to handle job action if it comes to that, although I hope it does not. We’re committed to continued bargaining with COPE in hopes of reaching an agreement.” SGI says its network of motor licence issuers and independent brokers will continue assisting customers with their licence issuing, vehicle registration and other insurance needs. Brokerages and issuer offices are not SGI offices and would remain open in the event of job action. SGI also has online services that would remain available during any job action.

Health Sciences welcomes tentative agreement “The tentative agreement reached July 8 between health care employers and the Health Sciences Negotiating Committee represents progress from the so-called ‘final offer’ that SAHO presented to the union one month ago,” Health Sciences President Cathy Dickson said. “This tentative agreement restores the wage differential guaranteed to those who occupy senior positions. It restores long-established wage differentials for educational achievement. It provides full wage retroactivity to April 1, 2009, and it sees SAHO agreeing to drop a number of proposed contract take-aways,” Dickson said at the signing of a Memorandum

of Agreement with SAHO. “The Health Sciences Negotiating Committee will recommend the tentative agreement to our Executive Council, and the Council will then determine its recommendation with respect to the tentative agreement, which will be sent to all our members for review and their vote. We expect this process to be completed within thirty days,” Dickson explained. “While we believe this agreement represents significant improvement from the employers’ so called ‘final offer’, we recognize that our job is far from done. Health Sciences will continue to call for an end to the chronic under-staffing of our professionals, which has cre-

ated long waiting lists for many of our services, and a dangerous lack of access to others. SAHO has refused to accept a Professional Standards clause in this contract. We will continue to call for health care employers to be made publicly accountable for their staffing decisions,” Dickson said. The new agreement provides Rural EMS workers with the first increase in their Stand By wage rate in twelve years (from $4.12 per hour to $5.00 per hour), however the association said it is still seeking to see that wage rate increased to at least 85 per cent of the Saskatchewan Minimum Wage to keep rural emergency services from continuing to lose qualified staff.

The staff of Last Mountain Times will be on holiday from July 19 to August 1 inclusive. Our last day open in July is the 15th. We will be open to the public again on August 2.

As residents of the Last Mountain area, we almost feel obligated to apologize to our summer visitors and travelers concerning the disgraceful condition of the highways in the area. Although Department of Highways crews and contractors have been making an effort to smooth out the rough spots, frost boils and numerous pot holes, it seems they can’t fix them fast enough before another section of highway fails. All the water we’ve had this spring is the major cause of the problems, and a downpour in the area early last week resulted in more water flowing over Highway 15 in the Semans area (photo above). A crew spent several days last week fixing a particularly bad section of Highway 20 just south of Govan (inset picture). A local resident, Wayne Busch, did an informal survey and provided the results to Last Mountain Times: on the section of Highway 20 from Strasbourg to Duval, there are nine holes and 23 warning signs; on the section from Duval to Cymric, there are 14 holes and 21 signs; on the section from Cymric to Govan: eight holes and 27 signs; Govan to Nokomis: 37 holes and 113 signs. Totals: 68 major pot holes, and 184 warning signs, with an average of 3.7 signs per kilometer and 1.3 holes per kilometer on the 50 km section from Strasbourg to Nokomis. Don’t even ASK about Highway 15!!


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