Job deletions, scheduling changes will affect 1,000 nurses at St. Boniface

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This article was published 17/10/2017 (2969 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Forty nurses will be laid off Friday at Victoria Hospital, while an additional 1,000 nurses at St. Boniface Hospital will soon receive position-deletion notices.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority provided an update to staffing changes Tuesday, primarily focusing on St. Boniface, which requires “more comprehensive nursing changes than we’ve seen at other sites,” says Karlee Blatz, the WRHA’s senior labour relations counsel.

“We want to ensure consistency across the region,” Blatz said, adding it became clear the staffing models at St. Boniface in one unit were not on par with the staffing models in similar units at other Winnipeg facilities.

Part of that standardization, she said, will ensure that there are always the same number of clinical resource nursing roles — the nurses who help other nurses by managing things such as admissions and discharge — working during prime time.

“This will ensure that the units are supported adequately to meet the demands of patients,” said Krista Williams, the WRHA’s chief health operations officer.

“It’s ensuring that we have the right amount of staff each shift working to support that patient care,” she said. “In the past, we’ve struggled with having some days when you have more staff than on other days and this is kind of balancing that out.”

The deletion notices do not necessarily translate to layoffs; the nurses currently in those positions may be moved to other areas of the hospital and might be working different shifts, in many cases, as the WRHA consolidates health-care delivery in the city.

The WRHA says it is streamlining shift schedules and increasing the percentage of full-time positions at St. Boniface. All rotation or unit changes require position deletion notices under the nurses’ collective agreements.

The number of nurses whose jobs will change in some fashion — their unit, their rotation, or a combination of both — is high, but Blatz stressed that the WRHA will be adding 50 new nursing jobs to the facility.

While the news didn’t come as a surprise to the Manitoba Nurses Union, which had expected some scheduling changes would be required, president Sandi Mowat said she’s still uncertain about the overall outcome.

“I’m still not convinced that this exercise, that all of these changes, are going to do anything to improve patient care,” Mowat said.

The WRHA says there will eventually be 50 more nursing jobs, but 40 nurses at Victoria Hospital will get layoff notices Friday.

“We finished the whole (labour adjustment) process,” Mowat said, “and there are no jobs left there… their work will be over and they haven’t been able to secure other positions.”

Of the 40 people being cut, Blatz said 10 chose a voluntary layoff, but the other 30 will be leaving involuntarily. Some will be laid off because their unit is closing and their seniority level wasn’t adequate to participate in the position-selection process, while others were bumped out of their roles as a result of that process.

All will receive payment in lieu of notice, Blatz said, and all have options including preferential treatment for picking up additional shifts and newly posted nursing jobs.

There are also 40 vacant nursing jobs at Victoria Hospital right now, half of which are for registered nurses, she said, meaning they have the option of applying for them.

“We expect that many of the nurses will be able to gain employment at Victoria Hospital with very little gap,” Blatz said.

NDP health critic Andrew Swan said the latest staffing updates are just another example of the government “rushing into these drastic changes.”

“They’re going to disrupt the lives of 1,000 nurses who go to work every day to keep our loved ones safe and healthy,” he said in a statement.

“In order to better serve patients, we need to work together. The premier needs to stop, listen to the doctors and nurses at St. Boniface and throughout Manitoba, and put patients first.”

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca