Multiple Resignations of Nurses in Quebec

Nurses' Rights Must Be Upheld!

Nancy Bédard (left), President of Inter-professional Health Federation, visits 

Bas St. Laurent health care facility to speak to workers about the conditions they face. 

Since March, that is, since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, the number of resignations of nurses in Quebec has skyrocketed. There have been more than 800 resignations in Montreal alone, and resignations also affect many regions, including Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and the North Shore/North of Quebec.

These nurses quit their jobs to seek careers elsewhere. Some go to private placement agencies to return to nursing but under conditions where they do not have the same constraints regarding their hours and shifts, which have become untenable. Many nurses have also taken early retirement, which penalizes them financially. The number of nurses going on sick leave is also increasing.

The resignations in particular cause a serious problem for the capacity of the health system to face a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Denis Cloutier, President of the Union of Healthcare Professionals of the Est-de-l'Île-de-Montréal, confirms that resignations are on the increase in the Integrated University Health and Social Services Centre of Est-de-l'Île, Montreal's east end. He speaks of 363 departures since March 15, twice as many as in the same period last year.

"These are people who are completely reorienting their careers," Cloutier said. "We are very, very worried about the fall, because we always see a drop in the number of emergency patients in the summer and, with the fall, the viruses start up again. "

The nurses and their unions forcefully blame the Quebec government's ministerial decrees for the attacks on their rights and the deterioration in their working conditions which are forcing many to resign. The ministerial decree of March 21, which has since been renewed, allows for the cancellation of collective agreements covering workers in health and social services so that their working conditions can be changed unilaterally at will, in the name of the health emergency.

In a statement to Radio-Canada on August 21,  President of the Inter-professional Health Federation (FIQ) Nancy Bédard explains that the ministerial decree came down and "violated their rights, their vacations, their leaves, changed their schedules at the last minute, demanded they work all kinds of shifts, disrupting their lives."

This situation persists after five months, she informs, which makes nurses say that the ministerial decree is in fact, in the name of the emergency, a management tool under which the government executive and employers are attacking the working conditions of nurses instead of correcting problems that existed long before the pandemic.

"With the work overload, the ratios not yet deployed, government action taking time to be implemented, we already had major problems," she said. "More and more nurses were going on sick leave, resigning or retiring prematurely. In this climate of exasperation, we are now seeing a renewed move among the nurses toward the private agencies. At the start of the pandemic, when it was announced that the government was going to give many rights to managers by ministerial decree, the government and the ministry assured us that there really would have to be cases of COVID-19 everywhere in an establishment, a real disaster, before the decree would apply. That is not how it happened.

"They used the ministerial decree to manage the shortage, the difficulties that were there before, and it continues. So the effects are devastating, extremely harmful. We are now talking about a possible second wave. If the approach taken during the first wave does not change, in terms of working conditions and positive incentives for healthcare professionals, it will be even worse and more nurses will leave the profession."

This article was published in

Number 58 - September 3, 2020

Article Link:
Multiple Resignations of Nurses in Quebec: Nurses' Rights Must Be Upheld!

    

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