Quebec nurses strike against 'being taken hostage' for overtime shifts
12-hour shifts can 'easily' extend to 20 hours long with limited notice, union rep says
Nurses in Quebec are striking Monday over being "taken hostage" and forced to work mandatory overtime.
"[A shift] could go easily an additional eight hours," explained Roberto Bomba, treasurer of the nurses union Fédérationinterprofessionnelle de la santé (FIQ).
Bomba said that it's very common for a nurse's shift to go from 12 hours to 20 hours long with limited notice. He went on to explain that if a nurse who has a family is scheduled for a regular night shift that is then unexpectedly extended, they may be left scrambling to organize alternate childcare plans.
To compound this strain, Bomba said, the extra hours regularly cut into a nurse's respite time between shifts, escalating the fatigue they're already facing.
"The vast majority of society throughout Canada work a normal day, so why can't nurses have a normal day?" Bomba told The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti.
FIQ, Quebec's largest nurses union representing 76,000 nurses, is staging Monday's overtime strike to call attention to what its members say is a chronic systemic problem putting undue strain on its healthcare workers.
The nurses will be working their regular shifts but nothing more, unless there is an emergency, to demonstrate their concerns and seek follow-through from the Coalition Avenir Québec government on their election promise to end mandatory overtime.
The Current's request for an interview from the Quebec government was declined. In January of this year, Health Minister Danielle McCann said she expects the situation to improve by the end of 2019, and in a statement released last week said that the province is allotting $200 million to hire additional health-care workers.
To discuss the impact of mandatory overtime hours in Quebec and across Canada, Anna Maria Tremonti spoke to:
- Roberto Bomba, treasurer of the FIQ.
- Janet Hazelton, president of the Nova Scotia Nurses' Union.
- Maura MacPhee, professor of nursing at the University of British Columbia.
Click 'listen' near the top of this page to hear the full conversation.
Produced by Alison Masemann, Imogen Birchard, Ines Colabrese, Cinar Kiper and Jennifer Yoon.