Saying to have “heard the cry of the heart” of the nurses who carried out a sit in Thursday evening to protest against their working conditions and the glaring shortage of personnel on the Hudson Bay coast, the Inuulitsivik Health Center is responding immediately to some of the six demands made by their union.
Thursday evening, the nurses of the seven villages of Hudson’s Bay had triggered a sit in at 17 o’clock. They no longer answered the on-call telephones used for the population’s medical emergencies.
During the night, Judge Irène Zaïkoff of the Administrative Labor Tribunal (TAT) rendered a decision obliging the nurses of the Northern Union of Hudson’s Bay Nurses and Care Professionals to put an end to their means of pressure.
In a letter sent to all its employees on Friday and obtained by The Press, the director of the Inuulitsivik Health Center (CSI), Sarah Beaulne, and other members of management thank “the employees and managers who, although in solidarity with their colleagues, have voluntarily taken guard to avoid putting the population at risk . The same goes for the doctors who took on this responsibility to give the nursing team the opportunity to protest”.
Mme Beaulne and his colleagues say they are “aware and sensitive” to the demands of their employees. “We have been working with the NRBHSS (Editor’s note: Régie de la santé et des services sociaux du Nunavik) and the MSSS (Editor’s note: Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux) for months to bring about changes to the conditions work of our employees. Even if the work is not progressing at the pace desired by all the parties, we reaffirm to you that this is major substantive work, and that all the necessary actors have already been called upon”, is it written in the letter.
The Hudson’s Bay nurses had made six requests to their management before putting their sit in to execution. In particular, to be guaranteed 8 hours of rest per 24-hour period. In its letter, the CSI mentions that this period of rest is “in theory, always provided for” in the work schedules, but recognizes “that this condition could not be respected when the needs of the communities exceed the personnel necessary to answer » The CSI says that it is committed to ensuring that these 8 hours are always respected. Meetings are scheduled for next week, first in Puvirnituq and Inukjuak, then in each of the 5 other villages on the Hudson so that new work models can be implemented everywhere by March 31.
A pilot project will also be launched so that two additional plane tickets will be provided to “employees of clinical departments with full-time status, who provide direct services to the population on a sustained basis and who have to perform on-call periods”.
The Hudson Bay coast has been hit for months by a staff shortage. Last summer, the local health authorities called for the intervention of the army. The Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, went there.