FIQ negotiations: LeBel responds to nurses’ union and demands more mobility

“We can’t give up on the mobility of care personnel,” says Sonia LeBel, President of Quebec’s Treasury Board, aiming to reassure Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé (FIQ) nurses on the issue at the heart of the negotiations for a new collective agreement.

LeBel published an open letter in La Presse on Tuesday to “set the record straight” for nurses on the government’s objective in asking their union to enshrine greater mobility in the contract.

Négos/FIQ: Ma lettre ouverte dans La Presse ce matin.#polqc https://t.co/kKnJJ5k7gW

— Sonia LeBel (@slebel19) September 3, 2024

Lebel assured that “respect for the training required and the skills of nurses will always be a prerequisite” and that “no displacement will be imposed outside the position that the person occupies.”

She reiterated, however, that “in keeping with the guidelines set out above, we need to give ourselves greater scope for the mobility of healthcare personnel to improve access to services.”

“The question is: is the FIQ ready to work on greater mobility for nurses in the network, for the benefit of Quebecers? If so, it is at the bargaining table and through the experts that we will find the way to achieve this,” she wrote in her letter.

Point of contention

Mobility is still at the heart of the dispute between Quebec and the FIQ.

“We are so far apart right now,” says Montreal nurse, Naveed Hussain. “The major sticking point is the traveling and having nurses move from one place to another place without any clear direction.”

Health establishment managers want to be able to move nurses from one care unit to another, or even from one establishment to another, in order to meet needs wherever they arise.

Nurses see this as a way of denying their expertise and treating them as interchangeable pawns.

“We are afraid that we’re gonna be putting patient lives in jeopardy by transferring nurses to regions where they don’t work to units that they’ve never worked before,” Hussain said.

“The problem is the institutions will no longer have the decision making abilities because on Dec. 1, Santé Quebec comes into power and Santé Quebec is a large bureaucracy,” Hussain said. “They’re going to be deciding where individuals go. Are they really going to look at where the individual lives and decide, from LaSalle will send them to Verdun or will they be like, ‘Well, from La Salle, we’re going to send them to Rimouski?’ It’s going to be a disaster and this is what we’re worried about.”

Reacting to LeBel’s letter, the FIQ wrote on social network X that the minister “finally recognizes that care professionals could be moved against their will, considering that the government will be able to unilaterally change the workplace while respecting the position.”

1/4 [Lettre ouverte de @slebel19] ➡️ La ministre reconnait enfin que les professionnelles en soins pourraient être déplacées contre leur gré, considérant que le gouvernement pourra changer unilatéralement le lieu de travail tout en respectant le poste.

— FIQ Santé (@FIQSante) September 3, 2024

“We understand that (Sonia LeBel) is now trying to calm things down. After two years of negotiations, it’s quite a misstep that the government took last week. Our objective is to reach an agreement that will respect the expertise of our members and the care provided to the public,” added the FIQ.

“It’s unfortunate that the minister and politicians are really sort of framing the idea of mobility as the be all, end all, that: ‘If only nurses accepted to be moved around, we wouldn’t have all these problems with the health-care system,’ but that’s really not the case,” says Natalie Stake-Doucet, registered nurse and assistant professor at the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Nursing.

“Mobility is nothing new. It’s not some innovative strategy that we’ve never tried. We’ve had float teams in the health-care system for decades now and what’s really important task ourselves as a society: Why are we in such dire need of nurses on certain units and certain areas where there’s a real gap? There seems to be a real issue with retaining nurses.”

Hussain says, “My colleagues, a lot of them are either retiring or moving into the private sector because they feel that the public sector is no longer a fit for them.”

According to Minister LeBel, nurses’ fears may stem from the fact that “taken in isolation,” certain articles of Quebec’s proposal “are difficult to follow since they only expose part of the story.”

However, she assured that this is not the case.

“This mobility, which already exists in some FIQ local agreements, makes it possible to deploy initiatives, such as flying teams that lend a hand in the regions, and to reduce mandatory overtime as much as possible. We simply want to apply this principle across the whole of Quebec,” she explained.

While she says she understands that these proposals may give rise to “legitimate” fears, she stresses that it is crucial to “work together to allay these concerns.”

“We cannot give up on staff mobility in care, as it is vital to improving access to healthcare for the population,” she concluded.

“I think the government needs to wake up and really get back to the table and ask nurses, our leadership, what we need to make sure that this healthcare system doesn’t collapse or fail,” Hussain said.

“Smoke and mirrors”

The Legault government presented its latest proposal to the FIQ last week. The federation received it negatively, however, deploring the fact that Quebec is demanding even more flexibility from its members.

“There is nothing in what has been put on the table that recognizes the expertise of care professionals, nor prevents the employer from moving care professionals wherever it sees fit,” the FIQ denounced last Friday.

Calling the latest proposal “a step backwards from the agreement already rejected last April,” it asked its members to refuse to work overtime as of Sept. 19.

The collective agreement of the FIQ, which represents 80,000 nurses, nursing assistants, respiratory therapists and clinical perfusionists, expired on March 31, 2023.

The federation represents over 90 per cent of nurses across Quebec.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews