Nurses expand picket lines to Island hospitals

B.C. Nurses’ Union pickets went up Sunday and Monday at hospitals in Victoria and Nanaimo.

B.C. Nurses’ Union president Adriane Gear stopped to speak to nurses on a picket line outside Nanaimo Regional General Hospital on Monday, before leaving on a float plane to Vancouver to meet with provincial mediators. It was the second day of job action by nurses on the Island, after a picket line was set up at Victoria General Hospital on Sunday. If no agreement is reached, pickets are also expected at Royal Jubilee Hospital and South Island Surgical Centre on Tuesday, although the union said Monday afternoon that all picketing will end at 9 p.m. Tuesday in recognition of the mediation process.

Approximately 150 nursing staff and supporters gathered with signs and cowbells on the sidewalk outside Nanaimo Regional General Hospital on Monday. “This isn’t a decision that we took lightly. This is not something that nurses want to do, but here we are,” Gear told the crowd.

“It’s also never been like this in terms of working conditions, the impact on patient safety, the impact on our safety, the burnout, the violence.” Nurse Shari Masahod, who works in dialysis at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, said staff are often so overrun, they don’t have time for washroom breaks. “I used to work in emergency and sometimes you think: ‘I need to pee right now, but I can hold it,’ because someone’s calling, or you need to move a patient, they need to be turned, they need to be on the bedpan, and sometimes you just don’t have time.”

B.C.’s 60,000 unionized nurses are bound to essential-service agreements but have implemented targeted action that includes a ban on non-nursing duties and non-essential overtime. The B.C. Nurses’ Union said prior to picketing, essential service levels are set and agreed upon by all related unions. Members were told: “If you’re deemed essential, you go to work, and if you’re not, then you walk the picket line.”

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Gear said the goal of refusing non-nursing duties is to apply pressure on the employer without affecting the delivery of patient care. “What should have happened is then the excluded staff and management should have picked up those duties. Instead, they offloaded them on to many of our union colleagues who also have very heavy workloads,” she said.

“In some instances, there are some very concerning allegations of bullying, harassment, intimidation. Examples including managers telling nurses: ‘If you participate, basically, in the lawful job action, I will report you to your college.’ ” Gear, who joined striking nurses outside Victoria General Hospital on Sunday, said no nurse wants to be on a picket line but the situation had reached the breaking point.

She said the union regrets the impact on patients in terms of any postponed elective surgeries, laboratory appointments and other hospital services affected by the job action. Sister unions including the Hospital Employees’ Union and the Health Sciences Association were on the picket line at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital on Monday supporting the nurses. Allied unions are not crossing the nurses’ picket lines unless they are deemed essential workers.

HEU advised its members July 11 not to cross any picket lines at their worksites. Workers were told to determine if they are deemed an essential worker, with those already on duty when a picket line goes up advised to complete their shifts. The BCNU set up picket lines in Vancouver and Surrey last week, and cited what it said were thousands of cases of manager intimidation when nurses refused non-nursing duties.

Health employers have said nurses are not being pushed to fulfil non-nursing duties and have vowed to look into the cases. Mediation talks under special mediators Vince Ready and Amanda Rogers, who have been tasked with settling the dispute between the Health Employers Association of B.C. and the B.C. Nurses’ Union, were scheduled to begin Monday afternoon. Gear said mediation was understood as a possibility, but that the union had learned about the appointment of the provincial mediators from news media on Friday.

She called that part of a “pattern of disrespect,” adding that the BCNU has received an apology.