Nurses demonstrated Sunday in front of the Sainte-Croix Hospital in Drummondville against the “disorganized management” of the work of the CIUSSS de la Mauricie-et-du-Centre-du-Québec, the day after a judgment by the Administrative Labor Tribunal ( TAT) ordering the union to cease its pressure tactics and “to encourage its members to resign en bloc”.
“Today, we are not demonstrating so that the nurses do not work one weekend out of three. It’s much wider than that. Currently, the employer, what he wants to do in Mauricie, are major mergers of centers of activity,” hammered home the interim president of the Union of Care Professionals of Mauricie and Centre-du-Québec, Patricia Mailhot, in front of the cameras.
PHOTO SYLVAIN MAYER, THE NEWSLETTER
Patricia Mailhot, interim president of the Union of Care Professionals of Mauricie and Centre-du-Québec
She maintains that a nurse “cannot become specialized in more than one area”. “You cannot become a specialist nurse in the operating room, emergency room, medicine, surgery. It’s impossible,” continued M.me Mailhot. “It’s like asking a doctor who is a psychiatrist, overnight, to do an operation,” she also raised.
Earlier, the Administrative Labor Tribunal had ruled that the union, affiliated with the FIQ, had to stop its pressure tactics, which includes the threat of a wholesale resignation of the nursing staff. Judge Myriam Bédard prohibits workers from resigning in this mobilization effort. It also requires employees to withdraw their resignations filed in the context of job action.
According to the court, these measures deprive or are likely to deprive the population of a service to which they are entitled. All of this is happening because the CIUSSS de la Mauricie-et-du-Centre-du-Québec recently announced forced changes to nurses’ work schedules. This would include the imposition of having to work certain weekends.
“Numbers”
On social networks, images of the demonstration show a dense crowd in front of the health establishment. Hundreds of people participated in the march following the demonstration, according to the union. “Our conditions violated by the CEO, that’s enough,” read one of the signs.
PHOTO SYLVAIN MAYER, THE NEWSLETTER
Demonstration in Drummondville
The Alliance of Professional and Technical Health and Social Services Personnel (APTS) of Mauricie–Centre-du-Québec was also on site. “We have differences, but we share the same employer. We also experience its disorganized management which has impacts. Like you, we want to preserve public services and their quality,” said Véronique Neth, president of the APTS Mauricie–Centre-du-Québec.
She argues that the employer has “never gone forward with so little regard” for her “numbers”. “We know that the employer’s decisions deteriorate our working conditions and that this has an impact on public services. We stand in solidarity, and we will continue to demand to be involved in the solutions. We have to act together,” insisted M.me Net.
PHOTO SYLVAIN MAYER, THE NEWSLETTER
Demonstration in Drummondville
In her judgment, Judge Bédard stated that “according to the employer, these measures are intended to relieve the staff who provide continuous care and to reduce the use of compulsory overtime”.
In protest, the staff had begun to stop entering computer data into the patient’s file. This information would in particular make it possible to identify the number of patients, the reasons for consultations, the level of alternative care or the management of patient departures. This had the effect of “falsifying ongoing audits or even delaying the release of hospital beds”.
Remember that the collective agreement for the nurses and staff involved in this file will expire on March 31.
With The Canadian Press