Removal of candidates in nurses union vote spurs ire

When nurses across B.C. vote in union elections over the next several days, the only names on the provincial executive ballot will be incumbents.

The reasons for that amount to an unprecedented violation of democracy, according to a trio of former candidates who were removed from the ballot last weekend.

The candidates, Will Offley, Sharon Sharp and Mary Jean Lyth, had been running in the election for the positions of president, vicepresident, and treasurer, respectively. But on Sunday, the head of the nurses’ union’s nominations committee told them their names were being removed as candidates, said Offley.

As a result, Gayle Duteil, Christine Sorensen and Sharon Sponton will each receive another term by acclamation.

“This is the sort of action you would expect from a regime in Turkey or the Third World. This is not the sort of thing you would expect in British Columbia,” Offley told reporters Tuesday.

B.C. Nurses Vote for Change, a slate that held all three of the former candidates, alleged in a news release that the candidates were stripped from the ballot by the BCNU leadership because “they are afraid of what the members would decide in a free and fair election.”

On Monday, Umar Sheikh, the acting executive director and general counsel of the BCNU, wrote to union members to say the nominations committee “acts independently and its members are in no way affiliated with, or influenced by any candidate.”

Sheikh said the committee members are elected, do not hold political office, and are not affiliated with parties. The committee has an independent lawyer and its members are charged with setting election rules, he said.

Those rules had repeatedly been broken by the candidates during their campaign, Sheikh said. The candidates had also prompted complaints from members about issues like leafleting hospitals and spreading false information, he said.

Offley said the candidates intend to challenge the decision of the committee. The union executive had not received notice about any challenge as of mid-afternoon Tuesday, Sheikh said.

The union’s 47,000 members vote from now to June 2. Some candidates from the B.C. Nurses Vote for Change slate remain on the ballot and are fighting for a couple of dozen board seats, Sheikh said.