June 19, 2001

Bill 2 doesn't mention "overtime"

The first legislative action of the Campbell government has been to order a "cooling off" period for nurses and other health professionals. Ironically, the very act of doing so has caused more heat than the health care system has seen in over a decade. Bill 2 does not mention the word "overtime", yet that is at the heart of the dispute with the nurses.

Minister of Labour Graham Bruce's news release on the cooling off legislation for nurses and health professionals mentioned that under the previous collective agreement nurses agreed to work reasonable amounts of overtime.

The nurses' job action has shown that our health care system runs on overtime. They didn't do anything other than refuse to work some overtime.

This puts the government in a particularly difficult spot. Health Services Minister, Colin Hansen, has promised to make the health system better within a year. It cannot possibly get better without an adequate number of nurses. The Health Employers Association says that the best way to fix nursing shortages is to train more nurses. But training more nurses who then leave for the US doesn't help. Fixing the problem means keeping the nurses we have at the same time that more are trained.

Will mandatory overtime help B.C. keep its nurses? A legislated end to a strike that is merely the refusal to work overtime is a little hard to understand. The nurses' union can be ordered not to counsel its members to refuse overtime, but it isn't a big secret that overtime is the issue.

What if the nurses have gotten used to having a life? What if they simply, nurse by individual nurse, say no?

Government seems to be relying on the current Collective Agreement. Article 27.03 says "The Employer may request an employee to work a reasonable amount of overtime. Should the employee believe that the Employer is requesting the employee to work more than a reasonable amount of overtime, then the employee may decline to work the additional overtime, except in emergency conditions, without being subject to disciplinary action." This suggests that health employers could discipline nurses who refuse to work so called reasonable amounts of overtime.

Isn't that just what the nursing shortage needs? Can you see it now, nurses suspended for days as punishment while even more surgeries get canceled? This is the bizarre Alice in Wonderland type logic that will doom the legislation to failure. It is one thing to order an end to picketing, except there hasn't been any in this dispute. It is something else to think that nurses who are in short supply can be compelled to work as much overtime as employers deem reasonable under the threat of discipline for those who refuse.

June 23, 2001

Mandatory Overtime for US Nurses

The problems BC's nurses are having with mandatory overtime is a problem throughout North America. Read the April, 2001, story titled "The time has come to deal with mandatory overtime" published in the Official Bulletin of the California Nurses Association. Furthermore, an April 8, 2001, New York Times story reported that the overtime issues have been the focus of legislation in at least 15 states. Law makers in Maine, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, California, Illinois and other US states appear to think the time has come to at least limit the amount of mandatory overtime that a nurse can be forced to work. It should be noted, that none of these attempts at legislation have yet resulted in law. In some states several versions of the same type of legislation are before their legislatures. The topic of limiting overtime remains one of hot debate in the US. The general approach of the attempts at legislation is to give workers (sometimes just nurses) the right to refuse to work more than 40 (in some states 48) hours per week. This does suggest that while US salaries may be higher, working conditions can leave a lot to be desired.