During the last election campaign, in an interview with the Hospital Employees' Union's newspaper, Gordon Campbell said he would not break contracts. He promptly broke that promise and used his legislative power to strip provisions out of the agreement that the union first negotiated in the days of W.A.C. Bennett. There has been a war of words between the government and HEU ever since. The current strike stems in large part from that ill will combined with demands for even more contract concessions. On VI TV's weekly political affairs program, "Right On", conservative commentator Norman Spector observed that the Campbell government is reaping what it sowed in the hospital strike. The government will do everything possible to escape that image and to try to capture both political advantage and large financial savings from the strike. Finance Minister Gary Collins probably knows how many millions he "saves" every day as wait lists grow longer and patients suffer.

When the government senses, or determines through polling, that the public has had enough, it will move with legislation to end the strike and impose a "contract". Campbell can be expected to plead that public policy must be set by the government, not by the union. He will probably attempt to tie NDP leader Carole James to the union in a cynical bid to improve his polling numbers. James is a step ahead of him. On April 26, in an interview on the Rafe Mair show on AM 600, James said that she would legislate an end to any strike that threatened public health or safety. She also said that under an NDP government, negotiations would start from where the parties are at the time, not from restoring all of the contract provisions that were changed since 2001.

When the BC Ferry & Marine Workers took job action, the dispute was resolved through acceptance of binding arbitration. Governments don't like binding arbitration because they cannot control it. The Campbell government used its legislative power to overturn an arbitrated settlement with BC's doctors. Many suspect that the only reason it agreed to arbitration with the ferry workers is because they couldn't take the chance that key engineering staff would resign. In the case of the hospital strike, there can be little doubt that the Campbell government is considering legislation that will impose the employer's last offer. Legislation like that would involve a gamble that large numbers of hard to replace skilled workers would not resign in disgust. The government whip once referred to HEU members as nothing but toilet cleaners; however, the union represents a large variety of workers, including perfusionists, renal dialysis technicians and licensed practical nurses.

When the NDP legislated an end to the school support workers' strike in April 2000, its legislation provided for the appointment of an industrial inquiry commission, and it made the decision of the commission binding on the employer and the union. A similar approach was taken by the Campbell government in 2003 with its Coastal Forest Industry Dispute Act. Imposing the recommendation of a third party is not as constructive as freely negotiating an agreement, but it is an acceptable way to resolve disputes. Imposing the employer's last offer is not acceptable, and it is not "sustainable". Legislatively imposed contract terms are what created the current bitterness. It will be very difficult for managers in the health system to get anything that requires worker cooperation done if their contract is stripped, with not even the pretense of balance from third party arbitration.

The Campbell government may attempt to frame the dispute in terms of "who is running this province, the government or the union?" That question illustrates the problem. No single party is running the province. A capable government knows that there are limits to power. Obviously it couldn't demand that people work for free, that is an extreme example of a constraint or limit to power. The need to reach agreement rather than impose terms is a limit to power which is ignored at the government's peril. That doesn't mean caving in, but it at least means third party arbitration as an alternative to negotiation.