Convention Rally: Health-Care Unions Come Together to Demand an End to Workplace Violence
“We are done being quiet. We are done being told that violence is just part of the job,” exclaimed BCNU President Adriane Gear from the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery on the final day of BCNU’s annual convention.
Gear’s speech capped an energetic rally attended by more than 500 nurses and supporters who took to the streets of Vancouver to demand that health employers keep nurses and all health-care workers safe from violence. The group shut down traffic at the intersection of Burrard and Georgia before proceeding to the art gallery while listening to a chorus of cars honking in support.
Union Vice President Tristan Newby began the rally by welcoming nurses from every health authority in the province. He also welcomed the many allies who joined BCNU in calling on the government and health employers to take action. These included Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) President Linda Silas, Saskatchewan Nurses’ Union Vice President Denise Dick, Health Sciences Association of BC President Sara Kooner, BC General Employees’ Union President Paul Finch and Michelle Reyna from National Nurses United.
Silas took to the podium to share some staggering statistics from the CFNU’s annual national survey of Canadian nurses. “Sixty-five percent of BC nurses have experienced a violent incident in the last year,” Silas reported, and said employers need to act to end the crisis. “These violent acts are crimes, and the perpetrators need to be charged,” she declared.
The crowd responded with loud jeers when Silas informed them that many nurses reporting violence have been asked by their employers what they could have done differently.
Gear spoke following Silas. She stood in front of 46 nurses holding signs to symbolize the average number of BC nurses who file WorkSafeBC time-loss injury claims each month.
“Across BC, violence against nurses is making headlines, but most of these incidents don’t make the news,” remarked Gear. “They are happening behind the closed doors of secure care areas, in empty hallways, and in long-term care homes where no one is watching.”
Gear added that the time-loss claims don’t include countless other regular incidents, including nurses being threatened, insulted, and spat on. “This would not be tolerated in any other profession,” she said.
Gear then welcomed Janice McCaffery, an emergency room nurse at Surrey Memorial Hospital who suffered a violent attack. McCaffery bravely stepped up to the podium to share her traumatic story and recounted how she was tending to a patient last June before they suddenly punched her in the head repeatedly. The attack left McCaffery with severe and persistent brain injuries that ended her nursing career. “I have no idea why they did this, but it gave me a bleed in my brain, a severe concussion, and my forty-year nursing career is over,” she shared.
Gear said McCaffery’s experience is why health authorities need to stop ignoring the violence in their facilities and do their job. She closed with an important message for all: “Enough is enough! Because if you don’t have safe nurses, you don’t have safe patients!”