Nearly 500 nurses gathered in Montreal on Monday to decide on a list of essential and non essential services they are expected to provide when there is a strike action by their union, the Fédération Interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ).
The FIQ after a review of the new contract offer proposed by the province's Liberal government says that issues of workloads for nurses and hiring of subcontractors during staff shortages are still unresolved. They went on to call the contract “odious”.
FIQ officials are meeting with Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc, Treasury Council President Monique Gagnon-Tremblay and Education Minister Michelle Courchesne late Monday to discuss the contract.
Mr Bolduc also met reporters to announce $64-million for the improvement of one of Montreal’s busiest emergency rooms. A union of 58,000 health care professionals however sounded skeptical when they said that the working conditions and load on the healthcare workers like nurses need to be addressed before infrastructure development.
“What would the managers of health centres do if the 58,000 nurses, nurse assistants ... decided tomorrow to quit and join private agencies?” Régine Laurent, president of the FIQ, asked 500 union delegates meeting Monday. “And who would be blamed? Because when you look at management’s offer, (joining the private sector) is the only way to win decent working conditions.”
Laurent went on to say that the confrontation on Friday was a result of government decision to reduce the number of sick days available to nurses, reduce overtime eligibility (with no commensurate reduction in hours worked), change the criteria for recognizing university training in community health and, refuse the reduction of use of private nursing agencies in public-health institutions.
“It’s very interesting, the way they’re reacting to it,” said FIQ vice-president Michèle Boisclair. “We have about 4,000 private-sector nurses working in the public sector. These are people who were trained in the public sector – paid by our taxes – and now they come and work where they want, when they want. But when they do come, they don’t know the reality ... they don’t know the patients ... so (public-sector nurses) end up dealing with the heaviest cases.” Boisclair said private-agency nurses end up “getting the easiest cases,” but charge the province more for their services. “Last year the government spent more than $158 million for private agencies. ... Why not put that money into the system to attract and retain our experienced nurses?”