(Montreal) The FIQ fears that Quebec will go so far as to force nurses, regardless of their expertise and years of experience, to change facilities, care units and even shifts upon request to make up for staffing shortages.
Posted at 5:53 p.m.
Lia Lévesque The Canadian Press
The Interprofessional Health Federation, which represents 80,000 nurses, practical nurses, respiratory therapists and clinical perfusionists, is raising these concerns at the end of several negotiating sessions to renew collective agreements with Quebec.
“These are the signals at the negotiating table. They keep coming back with it. This is contemptible and shows that they do not know the work of a nurse,” complained Jérôme Rousseau, vice-president of the FIQ and co-leader of the negotiations, in an interview.
The FIQ suspects that Quebec wants to go further in terms of flexibility in schedules and workplaces, as well as the versatility expected of nurses.
“For example, the government wants to take a nurse who has worked in a CLSC for 15 years and send her to surgery the next day to fill a hole,” Mr. Rousseau explained.
“If I have a young mother who works the night shift and has organized her whole life around her children and her night shift… If she is told from one day to the next: ‘No, you, next week I will put you on the night shift .” “If you are 75 kilometers from home in a particular department in one day, it will destabilize the medical workforce a little,” Mr. Rousseau summarized.
Quebec actually stated that it wanted to review the organization of work to be more efficient and better responsive to needs and priorities. But he didn’t say how far he wanted to go.
For Mr. Rousseau, it is tantamount to a treatment of transferring nurses from one establishment to another, from one nursing station to another, without taking into account their expertise, in order to meet the needs here and there, without there being an exceptional situation that requires such a transfer justifies they are like interchangeable pawns, “weapons”.
“There are risks [à faire ça] » both for the public and for medical professionals, warns Mr. Rousseau.
“Because of these poor conditions, the number of people leaving the network will increase and this also leads to poor care conditions. We cannot treat patients well because we do not know the clientele and the specialties we are sent to,” he explains.
Not to mention, he adds, that the work colleagues are not the same, the equipment can vary from company to company and the layout of the rooms can also vary.
Demonstration and update on the negotiations
On Monday at dinner in Quebec, the FIQ once again expressed dissatisfaction with the negotiations to renew collective agreements. One of its committees will also meet on Monday and Tuesday to take stock of the negotiations.
The FIQ intends to prioritize its applications and reduce their numbers – something it had already planned before Treasury President Sonia LeBel asked all unions to do so. public and semi-public sector.
“We have already reviewed our demands,” as unions always do during long negotiations, Mr. Rousseau said.