'No choice': BC Nurses' Union issue 72-hour strike notice
The BC Nurses’ Union (BCNU) has issued a 72-hour strike notice on Monday, marking what it calls “a significant escalation” after members rejected a tentative agreement between the Nurses’ Bargaining Association (NBA) and BC’s Health Employers.
The “historic action” also comes just over a month after the vast majority of B.C.’s nurses voted in favour of job action, following six months of bargaining between BCNU and its employer without reaching a deal.
According to Adriane Gear, BCNU president and chair of the NBA, the decision spotlights a growing belief among its over 55,000 members that the status quo is no longer sustainable.
BC Nurses’ Union members held a rally ahead of a spring strike vote.
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“This is fundamentally a conversation about priorities,” said Gear in a statement.
“Nurses want to know why the health authorities continue to spend millions of dollars on costly short-term staffing solutions, while the nurses who are here for the long-term, struggling with workload pressures, unsafe working conditions and staffing shortages, are being told the cupboards are empty.”
On June 19, the BCNU announced that 67 per cent of B.C. nurses were against a tentative agreement originally reached on May 22.
The union said the vote reflects “growing frustration with pressures facing the nursing profession.”
Gear previously told Daily Hive that they are willing to take job action if the NBA isn’t able to negotiate a deal “that respects nurses.”
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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.
“This is not a step BC nurses want to take,” added NBA Chief Negotiator and BCNU CEO Jim Gould in a release.
“However, many have reached the point where they feel they have no choice but to shine a light on the realities they face every day while caring for British Columbians in crowded hospitals, understaffed long-term care facilities, community health settings and patients’ homes across the province.”
BC Nurses Union
“A huge sticking point” for the BCNU 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.
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, B.C. nurses are also losing access to their unlimited massage benefits.
The HEABC previously told Daily Hive that it respects the Nurses’ Bargaining Association members’ decision to reject the tentative agreement.
“HEABC continues to be available to meet with the Nurses’ Bargaining Association at the bargaining table, and we are prepared to continue negotiations to address the issues that both parties believe are important.”
With files from Hanna Hett