Nathalie Savard, President, Union of Nurses, Licensed Practical Nurses and Respiratory Therapists of Northeastern Quebec (SIISNEQ)As president of the union, and from what I see in the field, my concerns are always for the health and safety of our members and health care workers as a whole. It seems to me that decisions are sometimes made based on what equipment is available and on inventories, not on the basis of what is needed. Instructions for protection and the equipment needed are constantly changing. Recently, we had a new directive from our employer in the morning regarding disposable gowns and in the afternoon the Minister of Health said that we were actually facing a shortage. We can see how the government is failing to protect people's health and safety. There are over 4,000 people in the health care system in Quebec who are infected with the coronavirus. There is a big difference between what the government says and what is happening on the ground.
We have been saying since the beginning that it takes people on the ground to look after the health and safety of workers. We no longer see the managers. We do not know where they are. If the managers do not have the time, they should put people in charge who will take care of occupational health and safety. During the last negotiations, we asked for occupational health and safety officers, who are health care workers and are in the field, to take care of what is going on. The officer would be deployed on a full-time basis, to go around the establishments, with the power to say that this is not working and demand that this or that measure be applied. Right now we are seeing a big gap in terms of prevention in the health care network. We see the weakness of our network. Since the COVID-19 crisis, the work of the joint health and safety committees has been stopped. We never see people from the Labour Standards, Pay Equity and Workplace Health and Safety Board either. Health care workers are not guardian angels, they are human beings who provide care. They need to be given good working conditions and the means to protect themselves.
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As far as we are
concerned, we have gone from being guardian
angels
to a situation where we simply have to obey.
Because we are in a war
situation, our members are forced to increase
their availability, their
shifts are changed, they are not being
respected. Yet these are the
troops who need to be motivated. We have to make
sure that the
troops are there, but instead everything is done
to disrespect them and
that pushes them to resign. Since the Government
of Quebec's
ministerial order in March, that allows the
government to unilaterally change
our working conditions, employers are no longer
looking for a solution
to problems. If we have a problem, instead of
working with us to solve
it, they tell us that they will use the
ministerial order and that they
have the right to do whatever they want.