Barrette urges nurses to fill positions
Health minister accuses union of interfering
Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette is urging the province’s nurses to fill the many available fulltime positions to address the problem of mandatory overtime.
The sooner the positions are filled, the sooner the extra shifts will stop, he said Thursday morning on the sidelines of a meeting of the Liberal caucus.
Barrette said there is a vicious circle at play wherein nurses refuse to take full-time positions for fear they will be forced to regularly work overtime — the nurses say they are already overworked and exhausted.
However, that leaves the full-time positions open, making overtime mandatory, Barrette said.
He believes the union representing the nurses, the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec, or FIQ, is using “negative” and counterproductive terms that make the positions appear unattractive.
He denounced a “hypernegative” advertising campaign being conducted by the FIQ.
“There is a concerted action, it is clear,” said Barrette, who asked the FIQ to change their message.
“My job is to make posts available. I did it. Come: occupy the positions. It will solve the problem.”
He said mandatory overtime is not the norm across the network and that the problem is starting to subside as a number of available positions have been filled in recent months.
At an afternoon press conference, Premier Philippe Couillard called the situation “absurd” and went on to say that “when the available full-time positions are occupied, there will be a lot less pressure on the extra time required. The more these positions are left vacant, the more the situation of overtime will continue.”
Nurses held three sitins last month in TroisRivières, as well as in Sorel, Laval and Suroît to protest against working conditions.
A young nurse from the Eastern Townships, Émilie Ricard, expressed her distress and described her burnout in a viral message on social media.