Quebec nurses rebel against forced overtime, budget cuts

Nurses and other health care workers across Quebec have taken action to protest against draconian working conditions and a drastic decline in patient care due to years of austerity. They are demanding an end to compulsory overtime, the hiring of more nurses and other health care professionals, and a reduction in workloads through reduced, and strictly enforced, patient-nurse ratios.

In recent weeks, nurses at hospitals in Laval, the province’s third-largest city, Sorel-Tracy, and Trois-Rivières have resorted to job action, refusing to start their shifts and holding “sit-ins” until additional staff were called in, to protest the chronic lack of personnel.

Thousands of nurses and other health care workers have also taken to social media to voice their outrage at the state of Quebec’s public health care system. Facebook messages posted by two nurses have been shared tens of thousands of times and have attracted an avalanche of supportive comments, many from other nurses with similar experiences.

In the first message, Emilie Ricard, a young Sherbrooke nurse, explained that she had been responsible for more than 70 patients throughout her shift with just two aides and a nursing assistant to help her. In the other message, shared more than 75,000 times, Joanne Leclerc, a nursing assistant from Sorel-Tracy, denounced the fact that when she refused mandatory overtime she was suspended.

Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/29/quen-m29.html