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Health Care Workers Uphold Their Rights Alberta Nurses Demand Restoration of Special Leave ProvisionsThe United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) is calling on the Alberta government to restore special paid leave for health care workers who must self-isolate due to COVID-19. The government cancelled the temporary paid leave on July 6. At that time, both total cases and hospitalizations of patients with COVID-19 had been rising for approximately one month, and there was a major outbreak at the Misericordia Hospital in Edmonton. At Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, staff are battling outbreaks in six units, with 33 patients and 28 health care workers positive for COVID-19, four deaths, and 290 health care workers in isolation. There are also outbreaks at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Grande Prairie and the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton. Three long-term care and twelve supportive living and seniors' residences in Alberta currently have outbreaks. However the Kenney government has taken no action to restore special leave provisions. "Nurses who are required to self-isolate because of outbreaks in hospitals and long-term care centres are being forced to use sick leave days or take a financial hit," UNA Director of Labour Relations David Harrigan said. "Regular employees are running through their sick leave banks and casual nurses don't have access to sick leave, so they are losing income," he said.
Along with Alberta Health Services' (AHS) renewed focus on "attendance awareness" and "vacancy management" programs, UNA is concerned nurses will be pressured to report to work even if they are feeling ill during the pandemic. The so-called attendance awareness program is intended to pressure workers not to use their sick time. The vacancy management program "manages" vacancies by not filling them, which results in nurses being forced to work short staffed and to take on additional shifts and overtime. "Workers, especially health care workers, should never be pushed to work when they feel sick," UNA First Vice-President Danielle Larivee stated. "But this is exactly what AHS is doing by renewing emphasis on an employee 'attendance awareness' program in the middle of the continuing coronavirus pandemic. This is inappropriate and dangerous. The dangers of this approach during a global pandemic should be obvious to everyone, " Larivee said. "Even during a normal flu season it is irresponsible to create an environment where employees feel obliged to report to work; during a pandemic the effects are exponential," Harrigan said. "For those who are already struggling financially this is a further disincentive to remain at home in the face of mild symptoms." The stand of the nurses is just and deserves the active support of all Albertans. Health care workers are not a "cost" but the essential factor in the delivery of services. To suggest that sick leave for health care workers, who even in normal times face the risk of exposure to contagious disease, workplace injuries, the stress of working understaffed, as well as potentially transmitting illness to those they care for, is a "cost" reflects the outlook of a spent force incapable and indifferent to the well-being of both the nurses and other health care workers and those they care for. To speak of those who risk their lives every day to care for their patients as a "cost" and to exert pressure on them to act in a manner that violates their rights and endangers the sick and elderly in their care is contemptible beyond words. Further, programs like "attendance awareness" are imposed by executive decree and used not only to attack workers but to force the frontline managers to violate their own conscience and take actions which they know violate their professional responsibilities towards staff, patients, and residents. What is revealed is the need for a public authority where the health care workers play a decisive role and their initiative, expertise, knowledge, and sense of responsibility guide decision-making and decide what resources are needed for them to do their work.
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Harrigan called on the government to restore isolation sick pay,
noting that nurses could be assigned to do work they can perform while
in isolation, and receive sick pay when this is not possible. "Nurses
are on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic everyday and are feeling
extremely misused and disrespected," he said.