Eight months, one budget and one contract later, Wab Kinew is staring at his worst nightmare---a nurses strike.
Nurses at Manitoba's largest hospital, the Health
Sciences Centre, have rejected the labour contract the new NDP government
presented to them this month. Their bargaining committee has gone back to
government to find some solution but the NDP has already told them there will
be no more money, only words---possible changes to wording in the contract.
MNU
The NDP and Shared Health (Employer) has refused to
work with the Manitoba Nurses Union to address concerns presented in the
proposed contract. Should Shared Health Nurses vote in favor of a strike,
delays in healthcare will be inevitable across the board in Manitoba.
This is a slap in the face of the union's top
leadership who have been Wab Kinew's biggest backers and who sold him to the
public as the Great Saviour of health care in Manitoba.
A nurses strike would be the second vote of
non-confidence in two months in Kinew and his government from within the health
care system.
In April Dr. Eberhard Renner, head of the
Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Manitoba and the
provincial specialty lead for Shared Health, resigned, regretfully explaining
in an op ed, " I wanted this government to be successful, and I believed
in the need for change. But I cannot perpetuate the illusion that things are
better now than they were six months ago. They are even worse."
To understand why HSC nurses rejected the contract,
we read their comments on social media where they discussed the rejected
contract, amongst themselves. What we found was bleak.
Kinew is right to worry, HSC
nurses are a seething volcano that could blow at any moment.
Unlike the "anonymous sources" used by the Winnipeg Free Press, almost all the nurses used their own names. But because they were communicating with their colleagues and not intending for their comments to be read by the public, we will not identify them.
Almost all
the sentiments we cite were reflected by other comments on social media
discussions and are indicative of the issues and opinions of nurses in
Manitoba.
** SOS for RADICAL CHANGE:
"Dear MNU,
I have been a nurse for 15 years. Recently, I find
myself thinking about how I can get out of nursing and into another career.
It's not because of the patients or the work, it's
because of the environment. It's the leadership, the bullying, the abuse of power.
No longer does this feel like a safe profession.
When this government was elected I was full of
hope. Hope for better working conditions. Hope for announcements to retain
nurses. Hope for changes in leadership and change to the current culture like
they promised to do.
I have waited and watched and have seen no
change...instead of seeing signs of hope and action, I see few changes from the
government we had a year ago.
This government promised to listen to the
frontline, but we don't feel heard at all.
In fact, we feel more devalued. When is this change
they spoke of coming?"
*************************************
** I am glad I am at the end of my
career. . .40 years and I have never ever seen such chaos, low morale,
staffing shortages, inexperienced staff pushed beyond their expertise, managers
who are invisible and people making decisions on how the front line workers
should deliver care. . .managers who have NEVER walked the walk.
** The government is trying to keep nurses from
retiring or moving to private agencies by paying full time nurses what they
would get from agencies and giving bonuses. But that's pitting LPNs against RNs, part-time nurses against full-time,
and agency nurses against hospital nurses. The rifts are already hurting
nurses…
** The union should never has agreed to a bonus for
‘selected nurses’ only. I also own a 0.7 EFT, but work full time +. I have a
young family, and I need to balance child care with my husband. Owning a full
time position would be difficult to do that. There is so many reasons why
people don’t hold 1.0 eft positions, but doesn’t mean we don’t work just as
hard as full time employees. What a way to cause a rift between
nurses.. all nurses work hard, therefore we should all be entitled to the same
bonuses
** It should also be noted that
the nurses Union leadership have done nothing to improve conditions and instead seem to be toeing the company
line with thinly veiled threats seemingly
discouraging nurses from striking with their information sessions and
informational emailers
** Everyone in charge at MNU needs to be
replaced. Unions a fraction of their size manage to garner more power than
these pissants that beg it's members to accept terrible deals while giving no
information as to what they contain, and actively try to stop their members
from striking.
** From what I’ve heard from some nurse colleagues
of mine, the MNU has been absolutely limp dicked during this entire round of
contract negotiations. Not to mention, borderline bullying the Shared Care
nurses into accepting the current contract with zero revisions. In the very
least, nurses deserve to be supported by their own union. I fully support a
strike ✊
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If the government thought that bribing nurses to
stay or desert private agencies for higher full-time pay plus bonuses, then the
pushback will come as a great surprise.
** I'm a nurse. It's nice that we get so
much support from the public but we do get paid alot. With a 4 year degree
which can be done at an accelerated pace now. I make more than anyone with a
masters in the hospital. Even more than Physician Assistants. We deserve our
pay but any other profession are not getting our type of increases or contracts.
* * I was very tempted to renew. The
$$$ would be insane But…. Those of us who have retired. WHY! we are jumping back in to a toxic work
environment.
** Working in an ICU this results in pay cuts
whereas lesser acuity wards will be looking at pay bumps. It'll pass likely
because of the voting groups that make up a majority, but expect an
exodus of employees from ICU, NICU, and emergency departments if they can make
almost as much for half the work and bullshit Half weekends and
halved ICU pay in understaffed departments will not get the results they are
wanting to achieve
* *Wow increased pay for full time nurses. That’s a
slap in the face for those who simply can’t commit to full time hours or that
there are no positions available in their area of experience or at their
workplace. This contract is truly not what I expected it to be.
* *There's going to be a lot of resentment, I'd think, especially if a
nurse works 0.8 or 0.9 and doesn't get that extra bonus. I don't think
we need to have more divisiveness between nurses.
** Also, as a part time nurse you
are already sacrificing a lot of pay. Sure you have a couple extra days off but
you also are making less. Now that gap is going to be even larger. And they try
and say they believe in the importance of work life balance yet I feel
I’m being punished for working part time
-------
The nurses acknowledge that staffing can't be
changed on a dime, but they condemn their union for failing to address in the
contract two issues that are top of their concerns--security and mandatory
overtime.
The examples of threats facing nurses is shocking.
** A nurse at who works at HSC’s Adult ER:
“On Monday while working at triage, a patient in
the waiting room was found to have a large switch blade knife open in her hand
in the waiting room. Luckily for us, Winnipeg Police were on site with another
patient. They intervened and took the weapon.
Sadly, this isn't new. This is an ongoing issue
here with little to nothing that has been done to improve safety for us here.
************************
* *This week we had an intoxicated patient pull out
what looked like a handgun. We called
911 multiple times, and it took them almost 20 minutes to respond.
One of our security officers was great, while the other tried to run and hide.
We notified management and senior leadership, who came down and watched the
events unfold. During the episode, the patient went outside. No one knew how to lock the door.
While this was all unfolding,
we had 25 people in the waiting room.
In the end, everything worked out okay. But sadly,
after the event was over, no one checked on the staff who were involved.
We feel that we are all alone.
That something bad is going to happen. Nobody cares.”
* *Now we have a huge drug problem in this
province. And no one has a plan to keep staff safe. I live in Russell. A nurse
was chased by a patient with a syringe. The local doctor had to disarm the
person.
---------
Last month Shared Health beefed up security at
Health Sciences Centre by giving security guards pepper gel. Here' how that's
worked in practice:
** CBC May 27, 2024
The security source said the officer was in the
room with the patient when he was harming himself, but he could not deploy his
pepper spray gel because they were in an enclosed area, and it could've gotten
into the ventilation system.
The source said institutional safety officers
need either a baton or a Taser to respond to some incidents inside the
facilities....
"We are a 24/7 facility and we never close our
doors.… We have folks who are high on meth, we have folks who are psychotic,
suicidal, homicidal."
Batons? They're discussing providing close contact weapons to security staff so they can defend themselves if they're engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the hospital? Did you ever think that such a situation would ever even be contemplated?
Incidents like
these don't make the news, but they're frequent enough to make nursing a
dangerous profession.
------------
MANDATORY OVERTIME
We've heard the phrase a thousand times, but it was
reading what it means that made us sick.
Nurses on some wards work 12-hour shifts, by
choice, but when mandated they have to work 16-hour-shifts.
Sixteen hours.
With time to get to and from work, they never get a
full night's sleep. Do you want an exhausted nurse handing out medication ?
** With rising substance abuse
and a rampant feeling of anger amongst patients that comes from long
wait-times, nurses are being mandated daily. And those with no childcare are reportedly threatened to be
reported to college if not compliant. Low morale and high sick time is
commonplace.
* * That should make you angry not roll over.
Unions are supposed to fight for fair wages not promote status quo. The new nurses contract is literally less
than what we are currently getting. $6 icu and Er pay is reduced to 3&4
respectively weekend $8 premium reduced to 5.75. The fulltime incentive is the
only thing staying the same. They combat this by saying we get more sick time
but if we use the amount of sick time they actually give us we get
called into hr for using too much sick time... Riddle me that.
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An eye-opener was seeing how nurses acknowledge
that the stories behind the headlines are often very, very different.
And many of the horror stories never even make the
news anymore, as the Conservatives don't have the shill doctors groups to run
to the NDP's biggest cheerleaders to carry "scoops" of a health care
in crisis.
** Recently, the government announced another 50
beds at HSC to help alleviate the pressure on the system, particularly when it
comes to the ED backlog. The new HSC beds will open over the next year
according to the province’s news release, HOWEVER about half are already open
according to medical staff.
Huh? The vacancy rate in Medicine at HSC is
about 20% right now, so the 35 beds in medicine they announced are just beds
without staff.
** The 120 nurses they say that
will be hired are the likely the expected number of graduates from the U of M,
BU, University North, RRCC, and ACC’s nursing programs! Those numbers were
already expected!
** Recently MNU learned that the
Dauphin Hospital is in crisis. Big surprise, no? ... The hospital itself has a
55% vacancy rate and there is a 63% vacancy in the ER alone. In fact, one
casual nurse is currently driving from Brandon to help keep the CancerCare unit
from closing.
While it might seem the nursing profession is under
tremendous strain in Manitoba, we were mildly surprised at how even the most
jaded nurses were as worried about the impact on the next generation as on
themselves.
** Manitoba Nurses Union
march 28·
Recently, a nurse with 30+ years of experience who
works in a rural hospital wrote in to us to share her concerns about the
continual erosion of adequate staffing, combined with declining morale in the
face of ever increasing patient numbers and acuity.
“I write this letter with genuine concern
surrounding the lack of support for new graduates. There is continual
discussion about training more nurses, more aides, more clerks, more lab and
diagnostic staff in an ever declining workforce, yet no talk of support. New
grads arrive for a job in our public health system and I fear they are not
receiving enough orientation or mentoring to equip them to feel competent in
their new roles.
New grads are expected to be
charge on nights. They are terrified and considering leaving healthcare
already. New lab techs are given one day training on a bench and the next day
are expected to run it alone. New clerks are trying to teach themselves after
only a few days of training, and so on...
The reality is staffing is so short, spread so
thin, that the senior staff are just trying to keep their heads above water
with patients, never mind mentoring and teaching new grads too. The irony
though is that we desperately need our new grads to stay! Somehow we need to
find a way to support them better. We can't afford to lose another nurse -
never mind the mentality of sink or swim.”
** This echoes conversations I have had with
previous managers multiple times over the past 5 years, due to significant turn
over and loss of senior staff. We desperately need these new grads but
the system is failing them and setting them up for failure. Because there
are so few senior staff available to mentor new staff... and it's quite
difficult when they are barely staying afloat themselves. Going into work day
in and day out feeling like you are drowning takes quite the toll on a person.
Especially when it has been ON GOING for years and there doesn't seem to be any
help in sight. One can only tread water to stay afloat for so long
before they burn out.
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While Wab Kinew ponders the nurses' revolt, more
trouble has risen over the horizon. The Manitoba Association of
Health-Care Professionals, which represents paramedics, midwives, lab
imaging technologists and respiratory therapists, is bargaining for a new
contract. Their old one expired in March. The issues facing that union are
exactly the same as the ones raised by HSC nurses.
A union rep told the Winnipeg Free Press this week
that almost half of respondents to a union poll say staff morale is "much
worse" than pre-covid. Will the HSC nurses wait to see how the Health-Care
Professionals fare in their negotiations before deciding on a strike?