Nurses Say Intimidation Is Spreading as Eby’s Health-Care Fight Expands

When nurses are alleging intimidation and expanding picket lines, the government’s health-care labour problem is no longer contained.

B.C.’s nurses are no longer just rejecting a contract. They are publicly alleging a workplace crackdown inside the health-care system David Eby’s government is supposed to be fixing.

On July 6, the BC Nurses’ Union said it had received more than 1,400 reports from nurses across the province describing what the union alleges are attempts by health employers to intimidate members and interfere with lawful job action. The union says the reported conduct includes threats of discipline, warnings that professional licences could be at risk, pressure to perform non-nursing duties, and pressure to work unauthorized overtime.

Those are allegations, and they should be treated as allegations unless proven through the labour-relations process. But they are not vague social-media complaints. They were put forward by the union in a formal public release, then repeated as the dispute moved onto the sidewalk at Vancouver General Hospital. CityNews reported Tuesday that BCNU members were picketing at VGH while waiting for a new contract, and that the union was calling on the province to intervene.

The escalation is concrete. BCNU said the VGH picket line began Tuesday, July 7, while essential service levels would remain in place to protect patient safety. Beginning Thursday, July 9, the union says additional picket lines will be established at Surrey Memorial Hospital and the Jim Pattison Outpatient Care and Surgery Centre. Essential services, the union says, will remain in place throughout the job action to protect patient safety.

The Hospital Employers Association says safe patient care is the priority and denies the intimidation accusation, according to Global News. That denial matters. So does the public test now facing government: if the employer side says it is protecting patients and the nurses’ union says its members are being threatened for exercising legal rights, British Columbians deserve more than talking points from Victoria.

This dispute did not appear overnight. BCNU began targeted job action July 2 with a ban on non-nursing duties and non-essential overtime after saying government had failed to improve its bargaining mandate. The union has also pointed to the scale of the rupture: 50,850 nurses participated in the May strike vote, 98.2 per cent supported job action, and members later rejected a tentative agreement by 67 per cent.

That is the number the NDP cannot spin away. A government that promised to stabilize health care now has nurses at picket lines, a provincewide allegation file, an employer denial, and expanding picket lines at major facilities.

Patients need essential services protected. Nurses need their rights protected. Taxpayers need a government capable of managing both at the same time.

If Eby’s answer is still to wait out the optics, the optics have already moved. They are standing outside hospitals.