Kuujjuaq health workers demonstrate for better benefits

Health workers at the Tulattavik hospital in Kuujjuaq demonstrated March 15 in front of the hospital to support their union’s call for better benefits. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)

Noon-hour demonstrations this week outside Kuujjuaq’s Tulattavik hospital: that’s how members of the union for health care technicians and professionals at the hospital plan to a support a call for them to receive the same benefits that hospital nurses receive.

They carried a trilingual sign, saying “enough is enough,” to show their frustration over the situation they say needs action now.

The union members, Tulattavik lab and radiology technicians, physiotherapists, social workers, psychologists and administrative technicians, who demonstrated outside the Kuujjuaq hospital March 15, signed a contract in 2010 that’s in effect until 2015.

But there’s $25 million budgeted in that agreement which hasn’t been allocated yet.

And union members want to see that money paid out to them as a signing bonus and retention premium, said Serge Doiron, a Kuujjuaq-based lab techician and spokesperson for the union.

That would increase the number of health care workers willing to work in Nunavik and stay on the job, the union argues.

Nunavik’s nurses have received premiums between $14,000 and $17,000 a year for more than a decade.

“We’re basically asking for parity with nurses in the region,” Doiron said. “The reality is that the challenges we face are the same.”

The union, affiliated with Quebec’s CSN (Confédération des syndicats nationaux) union, is currently in negotiations over how the $25 million will be distributed.

But their employer (represented by the Comité patronal de négotiation du secteur de la Santé et des services sociaux) wants to use that money on administrative measures, Doiron said.

Tulattavik workers plan to continue demonstrating outside the hospital’s main entrance this week during lunch hour to draw attention to their demands.

Meanwhile, their union president, Jacqueline Bernier, is attending negotiation sessions in Montreal, where CSN members also demonstrated in front of the office of Quebec’s health and social services minister, Yves Bolduc, March 15.

“From Kuujjuaq to Puvirnituq by way of Chisasibi, more than 30 per cent of positions of social workers, educators, human relations officers and medical technicians are currently vacant,” said Laurier Goulet, of the CSN’s Fédération de la santé et des services sociaux (health and social services federation), in a news release.

“The social infrastructure of the North is facing a crisis at a time of expansion of the services required by the development under the Plan Nord.”

For almost 12 years, the union has demanded attraction and retention measures for the technicians and professionals, not only for workers who serve Nunavik’s Ungava coast (Tulattavik), but also those who serve the Hudson Bay coast (via Inuulitsivik hospital in Puvirnituq) as well as in parts of the James Bay Cree territory.

Qualified and skilled personnel are key to ensuring that Inuit patients receive the same quality of services available elsewhere in Quebec, Goulet said.

A speaker gets cheers and applause during a March 15 demonstration in front of the Tulattavik hospital in Kuujjuaq by members of the union representing the hospital’s health care technicians and professionals. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)