What would happen if B.C. nurses go on strike?
The vast majority of B.C.’s nurses have voted in favour of job action, following six months of bargaining between BC Nurses Union and its employer without reaching a deal.
While over 98 per cent of nurses support job action, Adriane Gear, the BC Nurses’ Union President and chair of the Nurses’ Bargain Association (NBA), emphasized that it’s the “last thing” we want to do.
“We hope that this sends shock waves through the system, that the employer is paying attention, that government is paying attention, that nurses in this province are not going to be bullied. We want to be respected. We want the opportunity to negotiate a deal at the table,” she said, in an interview with Daily Hive.
After the vote, both NBA and its employer, the Health Employers Association of BC (HEABC), have agreed to return to the bargaining table.
“HEABC believes that negotiations are best kept to the bargaining table where the parties can work together on solutions that are mutually beneficial and support the government’s and employers’ key priorities,” said HEABC, in a statement sent to Daily Hive.
If the NBA isn’t able to negotiate a deal “that respects nurses,” Gear said they are willing to take job action.
She this could include working to rule, which means that nurses would refuse to take on any additional tasks beyond their job requirements.
It could also include banning nurses from completing non-nursing duties, such as answering the phones, handing out meal trays, emptying laundry, or cleaning stretchers — all additional tasks that nurses end up doing. If nurses stopped doing these tasks, it would fall on non-unionized staff, like managers, to pick up the slack.
“That creates a lot of pressure, because on top of their regular duties, now they’re on the hook to do all that stuff,” Gear said.
Another option could be creating information picket lines.
If the union escalated to a full strike, the union themselves would become responsible for staffing, of which they are required to maintain at essential service levels. Gear said this could cause non emergent services to be rescheduled.
“We don’t want to do that. It’s already difficult enough accessing health care in this province for patients.”
Why did it get to this point?
Gear said they have put forward 140 proposals to HEABC, but had heard back on just 64 of them and only four were accepted. These proposals are around things like working conditions, occupational health and safety, and violence.
Further, “a huge sticking point” is that while nurses were offered a general wage increase of three per cent a year (in line with other public sector unions), they weren’t offered an additional two per cent of ‘enhanced mandate money’ to improve working conditions, as other public sector unions received.
“Of that two per cent, we’ve only been offered 0.4 so there’s a 1.6 per cent discrepancy that other unions have been able to negotiate. [It] is very unclear to us to this date whether or not we will be able to access it,” Gear said.
She said this amounts to about $100 million per year.
“Why should nurses who continue to work short, who have worked very poor working conditions throughout the pandemic to this current date, why should we get anything less than other bargaining associations?”
Gear said they have also “been very clear” that they need to negotiate improvements to their benefits.
“Nurses need eyeglasses so that they can see the really tiny writing on medication vials as they’re drawing it up for their patients. We need hearing aids so that we can communicate effectively with our patients. And we need good paramedical so that nurses can stay fit to practice at the bedside,” she said.
Meanwhile, nurses are also losing access to their unlimited massage benefits.
In 2019, the NBA and the employer reached an agreement to contain the cost of registered massage therapy. However, the pandemic followed shortly afterwards, and no one — including nurses — could access these services, and it never went forward.
“And then, you know, in the last couple years, the employer has raised this and said, like, ‘Hey, we’ve got this agreement. We want cost containment around your registered massage therapy benefits,'” said Gear.
She said that since 2019, nurses’ injury rates have increased by 25 per cent and psychological injuries have gone up threefold.
“We were better staffed before the pandemic. It’s a different time now. It’s not the time to be eroding nurses’ benefits. Especially when we have this agreement for ratios and we need to recruit and retain as many nurses to this province as we can.”
While the union wanted to bargain for this benefit in the collective bargaining process, the employer took it to arbitration.
On January 1, 2027, nurses’ massage benefits will drop from unlimited to $1,475 per year and continue to diminish, year after year.
“That was the cherry on top, so to speak,” she said.