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Quebec Health Care Workers Step Up the Fight for Their Rights Determined Actions to Abolish Untenable Mandatory OvertimeHealth care professionals who are members of the Interprofessional Health Care Federation of Quebec (FIQ) are stepping up their actions to have mandatory overtime (MOT) abolished as part of their "MOT is a Death Sentence for Healthcare Professionals" campaign. FIQ's member unions held general membership meetings during the week of October 11 at which members discussed the federation's action plan.
According to the FIQ, the weekend went well. Wherever the member unions decided to refuse mandatory overtime, during these two days, there was almost none. "No MOTs were announced this weekend. I didn't get any calls," said Karine d'Auteuil, Interim President, Union of Health Care Professionals for the Outaouais to the local press. "It was to demonstrate that when we take the big step of announcing that we are refusing MOT, that we are ready to go before the Administrative Labour Tribunal, the employer redoubles their efforts to avoid mandatory overtime. They did this for 48 hours versus doing it year round. It's not the same work for them. Carrying out work reorganization for two days is less of an effort than doing it for 365 days. Providing services according to the guidelines we have in place should be done year-round," she said. "If we have to announce 365 days with no MOT, we'll do it to ensure that our care professionals have a work-family quality of life and can have the guarantee that when they finish their shift, they will be able to leave on schedule," she added. The nurses are saying that MOT is in fact a management method used by the government and administrations to avoid having to improve their living and working conditions. It aggravates their health and safety problems, both physical and psychological, and destroys all chances of recruiting the thousands of care professionals needed to provide the population with essential care and services throughout Quebec. Nurses are saying outright that any measure to address the problem that relies on temporary financial bonuses for nurses to retain or attract them to the health system, such as the measures announced by the Quebec government, will not solve the problem. Working conditions have to be changed on the basis of the demands and solutions put forward by health care workers, and ending mandatory overtime work is a key demand in this regard. "The current pandemic and the additional pressure it imposes on care professionals only adds to the already heavy burden of MOT and is causing more exhausted care professionals than ever to leave the CHU de Québec and the profession," said Nancy Hogan, President of the Union of Health Care Professionals at the Centre hospitalier universitaire (CHU) de Québec. "The ship is in serious danger of sinking and there is an urgent need to act. Our members have the right to work under adequate conditions and to live a normal personal and family life," she added. On October 15, the FIQ sent letters of formal notice to the Minister of Health and Social Services and to management at healthcare institutions, demanding that they put an end to mandatory overtime by November 15. The letter sent to the Minister specifies that if nothing is done by then, the FIQ will undertake "any recourse deemed appropriate or required, without further notice or delay." The federation has also filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission, which states that it is currently impossible for nurses to have fair and reasonable working conditions that respect their health and safety. The FIQ is asking that the Commission study the problem and make recommendations to the government. The federation has also requested the intervention of the Labour Standards, Pay Equity and Workplace Health and Safety Board (CNESST) and its prevention-inspection service in order to put an end to the use of mandatory overtime. It says that employers have a legal obligation under the Act respecting occupational health and safety to adopt work organization methods that respect the health and safety of health care workers, while the abusive and disproportionate use of MOT puts their physical and psychological health at risk by exposing them to work overload and the resulting psychosocial risks. The federation is demanding that the CNESST intervene through its prevention-inspection service in order to identify employer practices that are detrimental to the health and safety of care professionals and to impose, where necessary, corrective measures to eliminate the psychosocial risks related to MOT, in order to reduce and/or to control them. Workers' Forum salutes these actions through which nurses and other health care workers are speaking out in their own name and taking the initiative to ensure that the crisis of the health care system is addressed on the basis of their demands and their solutions.
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
Several
unions voted in favour of holding a weekend of work without mandatory
overtime on October 16 and 17. Unions from the Capitale nationale,
Mauricie-Centre-du-Québec, Outaouais, Laurentides, Bas
Saint-Laurent, Centre-Sud-de-l'île-de-Montréal,
Abitibi-Témiscamingue
and many others participated. The FIQ provided full support to the
member unions participating in the actions. In particular, it developed
an FIQ Health App through which members can provide information and testimonials
in real time on the overtime being imposed on them.