Vote to grey-list Thompson hospital a landslide

A second Manitoba hospital has been “grey-listed” after nurses voted overwhelmingly to discourage colleagues from taking work at Thompson General Hospital until safety concerns are addressed.

Manitoba Nurses Union members at the Thompson hospital voted 97 per cent in favour of the move Friday. Grey-listing is a union tactic where members warn others about an employer failing to maintain professional standards and advise against taking new positions there.

The vote came after nurses at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre voted to grey-list their workplace in August. This is the first time two Manitoba hospitals have been grey-listed at the same time in the MNU’s 45-year history.

“The members have spoken,” MNU president Darlene Jackson said after the vote Friday.

“They’ve made it clear that they are done with unsafe work situations, and the expectation is that the employer is going to remedy that.”

Voting took place Wednesday to Friday, and ballots were counted Friday afternoon.

Unionized nurses began considering grey-listing the Thompson hospital last year, after a man fired a gun inside the hospital on Christmas Eve, and after a stabbing in the emergency waiting room in September.

The MNU said the RCMP were called to the hospital more than 550 times in 2024.

Jackson said Thompson General Hospital administration have reached out to MNU after the vote was announced and she expects conversations to begin quickly.

If those conversations deteriorate, Jackson said, members will begin discouraging other nurses to work at the hospital.

“For now, it’s really more about trying to come to an agreement with the employer,” she said.

Health minister Uzoma Asagwara said institutional safety officers could be stationed at the Thompson hospital within weeks. The province committed to hiring eight of the officers for Thompson in Tuesday’s throne speech. Job postings for four full-time positions and one part-time position were posted on the Northern Health Region’s careers page on Friday.

The province also plans to hire First Nations safety officers to monitor hospital for added safety and security.

“We need to make sure that health-care workers and nurses are safer at work — and patients and visitors. Our priority is taking steps that have never been taken before,” Asagwara said.

The minister said the province would continue to take steps to improve safety.

“The union is going to do whatever they feel is necessary to do. And I certainly respect nurses’ frustration and concerns around challenges they’re still facing in health care. I take that very seriously,” Asagwara said.

Earlier this week, a spokesperson for the Northern Regional Health Authority said it planned to implement “secure and monitored” access to the hospital beginning Dec. 1.

Thompson Mayor Colleen Smook said the circumstances that led to the hospital being grey-listed are very concerning.

“I’ve definitely got the nurses and doctors, and the patients’ backs. I will support whatever they’re doing,” she said.

Smook welcomed plans to employ institutional safety officers at the hospital, but noted it will take time to hire and train the initial officers, she said.

She is trying to obtain more information from the province and Northern Health about their plans for the new security measures that will take effect next month.

“There’s talk of metal detectors and that at the hospital,” Smook said. “It’s a shame to see us having to go that lockdown way.”

She said Thompson’s council has worked with the current and previous provincial governments to do what it can to help recruit and retain staff in northern Manitoba’s largest city.

The hospital has a lot of contract nurses, Smook said.

“I don’t blame people for not coming here when there isn’t enough supports and staff at the hospital for them,” she said.

Smook said Thompson’s hospital, at more than 50 years old, was not designed to be the regional facility that it is today. The city has lobbied the province to build a new hospital.

MNU members voted to grey-list HSC in Winnipeg after a string of violent incidents, including five sexual assaults, at or around the province’s largest hospital.

Jackson said the MNU would “grey-list every hospital” if that’s what it took for safety to be taken seriously after a a nurse was sexually assaulted in the parkade of St. Boniface Hospital on Nov. 8.

A memo was sent to staff Thursday from St. Boniface Hospital president and CEO Nicole Aminot saying the hospital had made numerous safety enhancements in recent years and would “always consider doing more to help ensure the safety of our staff.”

The MNU has voted in favour of grey-listing six times in 45 years. Before HSC, the most recent vote was at Dauphin Regional Health Centre in 2007.

— with files from Chris Kitching and Nicole Buffie

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca