Nurses Take Job Action After Years of NDP Neglect

Image Credit:  BC Nurses Union

BC nurses have reached a breaking point after years of unsafe conditions, rising violence in the workplace and a government that wouldn’t listen. Now they are on the picket line fighting to be heard.

Last week, nurses began job action with a 72-hour strike notice, refusing non-essential overtime and stepping back from non-nursing duties. As of Tuesday, they have escalated to picket lines for the first time in decades. This moment was avoidable. It is the result of years of unanswered concerns from the frontline workers who keep our hospitals running.

Nurses have been raising the same concerns for years: unsafe staffing levels, rising violence on the job, and a workload no single person should have to carry. None of it is new, and none of it should have taken a strike vote to get the government's attention.

"Nurses are exercising their legal right to job action, but it shouldn’t have had to come to this," said Kiel Giddens, MLA for Prince George-Mackenzie and Shadow Minister for Labour. “This NDP government should be aware of the serious issues raised by nurses, and the sad thing is that workplace safety, and the safety of patients, shouldn’t even need to be discussed at the bargaining table to begin with.  After years of empty promises, nurses are done waiting for a government that treats their concerns as an afterthought."

98 per cent of nurses voted in favour of job action after six months of bargaining in which the NDP gave its negotiators nothing to offer. A tentative agreement reached in May was rejected by 67 per cent of members weeks later. Nurses say the deal ignored retention, leaned on an employer-funded benefit trust members do not trust, and dismissed the people who have held the system together through years of short-staffing and rising violence on the job.

Instead of fixing that, the NDP is burdening other exhausted health care workers to cover the gap, and there are reports of employer intimidation leading to official complaints to the Labour Relations Board. "You don't solve one staffing crisis by overloading another group of workers," Giddens said. "If that's what's happening, it shows a real lack of respect for the collective bargaining process from this NDP government. It's not fair to nurses. It's not fair to other health care workers. And it's certainly not fair to the patients who depend on a health care system that's been pushed to its limits.”

"Many of our hospitals are running under a global budget system, and many are not only underfunded but running overcapacity. This is happening because of this government's fiscal mismanagement, and its inability to properly plan and make the system accountable." said Anna Kindy, MLA for North Island and Shadow Minister for Health. "This government is trying to save money on the backs of our overstretched frontline nurses. That's not just unsafe for nurses, it's unsafe for patients and it’s what leads to burnout.”

"Training and recruiting more nurses will not fix this shortage if government can't retain the nurses it already has," Kindy added. "This government has had every opportunity to get this right, and it keeps failing. Nurses don't feel safe at work. Many patients are now lying on stretchers in the hallway and waiting longer for care. And the NDP's answer is to quietly push the burden onto someone else instead of fixing the problem it created. This government need to get back to the table, negotiate in good faith and address the nurses’ concerns in a meaningful way.”