Administrative Court Orders Nurses to Stay on the JobDuring the Christmas holidays, Quebec's Administrative Labour Tribunal (ALT) intervened to force nurses at the Gatineau Hospital to work the December 25-26 night shift. One of the nurses forced to stay at work had worked several 12-hour shifts as well as overtime during the week and was exhausted. The president of the Outaouais Health Professionals Union, Patrick Guay, explained that the same nurse had only requested two days off during the holidays, but was forced nevertheless to stay on the job and work overtime.
This ALT ruling is yet another measure which increases the arsenal of what are called legal measures which are put at the employer's disposal to manage its staff without taking into account collective agreements, the right to refuse unsafe work, nor the most basic sense of and respect for health and security for the workers and the people they tend to. Ministerial orders were imposed in March by the Legault government which, among other things, allow health and social services centres to cancel planned holidays and force part-time employees to work full-time. The employer, the Integrated Health and Social Services Centre (CISSS), states that it is counting on nurses to show their "solidarity," since 40 per cent of Outaouais nurses are part-time. This call to a so-called "solidarity" is backed by fines which can go from $1,000 to $6,000. What governments have always accused health workers of doing -- holding the population hostage when they undertake actions to defend the right to health and to humane working conditions -- is precisely what they themselves are doing. It is not fortuitous that workers have issued public distress calls that they are being held prisoner in their places of work!
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The ALT ruled that the "concerted" refusal to work overtime
represented an "illegal pressure tactic," which could "jeopardize a
service which belongs to the public by right." The judge thus ordered
the nurses to work their regular workday and to do the extra required
overtime.