Quebec labour tribunal orders nurses’ union to stop threatening mass resignation – Montreal | 24CA News
A Quebec nurses’ union’s risk to announce the mass resignation of a number of hundred of its members as a strain tactic is against the law, a Quebec labour tribunal has dominated.
In a choice launched Saturday, the Tribunal administratif du travail ordered the Mauricie and Centre-du-Quebec chapter of the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec union to cease encouraging the mass resignation, which it described as an “illegal concerted action, prejudicial to a service to which the population is entitled.”
The tribunal famous the union has been working to assemble the signatures of 500 nurses who’re able to resign over the Mauricie-Centre-du-Quebec regional well being authority’s scheduling modifications.
READ MORE: Quebec premier asks unions for flexibility amid collective bargaining talks
Workers, the choice learn, have additionally been refusing to enter some knowledge into affected person information. The modifications the union is protesting embody the duty to work a sure variety of weekend shifts.
In a written determination, Judge Myriam Bedard ordered the union and its members to cease each strain ways, which may trigger hurt to important well being providers.
Bedard ordered union members to “not resign in the goal of participating in the collection action and to withdraw their resignations presented in this context of pressure tactics.” They’re additionally ordered to fill in knowledge correctly.
The union has argued the choice to resign is a protected particular person proper that may’t be forbidden.
But Bedard dominated that, on this case, the threatened resignations are a “collective action” geared toward paralyzing providers, somewhat than a personal determination. The ruling famous the resignations will solely be introduced as soon as 500 employees have signed on, and union members have agreed to respect the seniority of their friends who resign.
It’s additionally seemingly that those that are tendering their resignation don’t truly intend to give up, it learn.
“This resignation process is more like a disguised strike,” Bedard wrote.
Bedard additionally ordered the union to “immediately and publicly” point out whether or not it intends to conform.
The union wrote on its Facebook web page that it was “disappointed but not surprised” by the choice, including it might focus on the matter at a basic meeting on Monday.
The union additionally rallied outdoors a hospital in Drummondville on Sunday to protest what it described because the employer’s “unilateral decision to modify their employment contract,” which is able to power nurses to work duties they hadn’t completed in years.
The employees “will not let themselves be intimidated or muzzled by a repressive employer that uses the (labour tribunal) to silence them,” the union mentioned in an announcement revealed on its web site.
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