Nurses overwhelmed and exhausted, SACPA told

By Dale Woodard on September 14, 2021.

Alberta nurses are feeling exhausted and undervalued.
Registered nurse Danielle Larivee was the guest speaker at the first fall edition of the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs Thursday.
Covering a variety of topics including negotiations with the province and pay rates in other provinces and the U.S. that could potentially attract Alberta nurses, Larivee touched on how nurses are feeling as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to overwhelm hospitals.
“They are feeling disrespected, they are feeling expendable, they are feeling undervalued and they are burnt out. They are exhausted and they are overwhelmed.”
Larivee is currently the first vice-president of United Nurses of Alberta, the union representing over 30,000 RNs, RPNs, and other frontline health care workers.
“We have a fairly strong voice in Alberta and we’re grateful for the opportunity to use it not just to advocate for nurses and the nursing profession, but where our heart is, which is advocating for a fair and efficient public health care system within this province,” she said. “When it comes down to it, nurses are very much about caring for their friends and families in many different settings across the province and the union is there to make sure they get some fair compensation while they’re going to work,” said Larivee.
On July 6, Larivee said the Alberta Health Services negotiating committee sat down with the UNA and said they had been directed by the government to propose a three per cent salary rollback.
Larivee said the rollback was a big hit.
“Our members, and thankfully some of our supporters, were outraged by that proposal.”
However, over the Labour Day weekend AHS negotiators contacted the UNA stating they had a new mandate from the government, said Larivee.
“They did drop several of the more offensive rollbacks AHS had been demanding,” she said. “They took back the three per cent cut to the salary appendix. They took back some reductions and shift differentials and brought back some support in order to get some staff in on some of these stat holidays that are difficult as well. However, they did still maintain a removal of lump sum payments we had negotiated years ago which works out to two per cent of our salary. So that was still a two per cent pay reduction that they’re proposing as well as taking away some important scheduling provision protection for nurses.”
While the province took most of the more “offensive” proposals off the table, Larivee said continuing efforts to roll back nurses pay and eliminating scheduling protections in a time when the system is under stress and health care workers are burnt out and exhausted is not going to help AHS solve its staffing problems.
“It’s likely going to make the situation worse, especially in the context of a growing national and international nursing shortage.”
Larivee said the UNA met with a mediator on Friday.
“We hope that through the mediator we can resolve the outstanding issues in a way that is fair to UNA members and will help the system ease the crisis that we’re experiencing right now. Everybody wants to get to an agreement. Certainly the provincial government has said they want to get to an agreement. However, if we don’t get to an agreement, this is an important step that allows the parties to exercise our strike rates for the first time in a very long time.”
Addressing the question of if it’s all about money, Larivee said what it comes down to is nurses have typically been willing to go on strike when they truly felt moral distress and inability to provide the care they need to.
“The current crisis we’re in is absolutely a huge issue for nurses across this province. They really need to ensure they have colleagues with them. We have nurses who are regularly working 16 hours a day.
“We need to make sure there are enough nurses. We need to make sure nurses feel valued and they feel respected in order to ensure they can continue to remain within the workforce in Alberta and that they continue to feel committed as professionals to doing that work and that we can continue to be understood as a place that nurses want to come to instead of a place nurses want to flee from.”

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