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Quebec Government Decrees Will Exacerbate the Crisis Only the Workers Can Decide the Conditions Needed to Keep the Population Safe
Health Minister Christian Dubé said during the announcement that "we cannot accept that there are workers who put vulnerable people at risk." Premier François Legault denies his government's responsibility for the untenable situation facing Quebec nurses and health care workers, which has led to a massive resignation of nurses and all kinds of physical and mental health problems among staff. He made the irrational statement that the announced measure will be combined with an effort to bring nurses back into the system, including retired nurses. Workers Forum points out that this new measure of the Quebec government will only add to the incoherence, anarchy and chaos in the Quebec health system. Instead of taking up its social responsibility to adequately fund and staff the healthcare system, end all privatization of services forthwith and provide universally accessible testing for COVID-19, the government takes all of this off the table and once again self-righteously attacks health care workers. These are the people who literally hold the system together. Health care unions have argued that the blatant irrationality and disrespect expressed in this measure will drive more workers out of the system, especially nurses, who are fed up with the ministerial orders that have been passed over the past year and a half by the government. All the ministerial orders attack the dignity of nurses and other frontline workers who serve the public and deny their negotiated working conditions. It is expected that if the government maintains its decision, even more nurses will leave, including double-vaccinated nurses.
Workers also report that workers with no symptoms of COVID-19 are no longer being tested after being in contact with a patient who tests positive. While vaccinating the population is an integral part of modern medical protocols, as has been the case throughout the neo-liberal anti-social offensive, these measures are being mandated without informed public discussion and without the consent of the workers who deliver the services. Pro and con positions are imposed to divide the population while alternatives which would protect the population and unite the people are deliberately left off the agenda. It is up to the workers and their collectives to discuss and decide what measures are needed to protect themselves and the public in health care facilities. They are the ones who defend the public interest and they are also the ones who have earned the respect and the confidence of the public by their dedication and courage under the most difficult conditions. This applies to the current mandates as well -- what to do with them is up to the workers themselves.
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
On September 7, the Quebec government announced that COVID-19
vaccination will now be mandated for all health and social services
workers, and that all workers who have not been double-vaccinated by
October 15 could be suspended without pay. They will be required to
provide proof of full vaccination. If they do
not, they will be reassigned to other duties, which seems impossible
since all workers in the sectors are subject to the government's
decision, or they will be sent home without pay. Volunteers will also
be sent home if they do not have proof of double vaccination by October
15. Visitors will be required to show their immunization passport
or they will not have access to patients.
The
irrationality of the decision can also be seen in the fact that
vaccination is presented as the ultimate measure to protect the
population, not as one of the measures, and that it is accompanied by
so-called "flexibility" measures that the government has decreed. In
particular, health care workers oppose the recent government decision
to
weaken infection prevention and control rules in health care
institutions. They are particularly concerned with the end of the
designations of hot, warm or cold zones which grouped patients
according to whether they had COVID-19 or not and according to its
severity, with the staff themselves working only in the one zone to
which they were
assigned. Staff will now go back to moving throughout the hospital,
without quarantine or other preventive measures. In emergency
departments we are back to the situation of having patients with
COVID-19 not isolated but in beds in hallways with only a curtain
separating them from uninfected patients who may be extremely
susceptible due to
other conditions.