By Canadian Press

Quebec nurses threaten to stop working overtime as talks continue for new contract

Aug 30, 2024 | 9:40 AM

MONTREAL — A Quebec union representing 80,000 health-care workers has dismissed the province’s latest contract offer and called on its members to refuse to work overtime beginning Sept. 19.

Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec, known as the FIQ, is the only major union without a contract after the large-scale labour conflict last year that closed hundreds of schools for weeks and delayed surgeries.

The FIQ represents most of the province’s nurses, and also respiratory therapists and clinical perfusionists — technicians who operate blood pumps during cardiac surgery.

Its threat risks causing major disruption across the health-care network, where employees are routinely asked to work overtime because of widespread labour shortages, particularly for nurses.

The union says the government’s latest offer, made this week, is nothing more than “smoke and mirrors.”

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Negotiations are stuck around the government’s demand that nurses, on a voluntary basis, be free to move from one health-care facility to another to address needs in the system where they arise.

But the FIQ says the measure would disregard nurses’ expertise and treat them like interchangeable pawns.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 30, 2024.

The Canadian Press