'We're trying to say to the 'government; it's time to get off the pot and make us an

Warning that Nunavut's health care system faces a severe staffing crisis, about 40 Nunavut nurses and their supporters stood in -27 temperatures in Iqaluit this past Monday to communicate their demand for better wages, benefits and working conditions.

"I'm here to notify everyone that nursing, the staff and everyone else, is in a crisis," said Asenath Idlout, a Nunavut nursing graduate who's worked at the Qikiqtani General Hospital for two and half years.

Nunavut nurses say higher staff housing rents, a rising cost of living, and poor working conditions are driving permanent, full-time nurses out of Nunavut, threatening the quality of health care.

"You're going to see a lot of senior staff leaving, and if they go we're not going to have a functional hospital, because we need the senior staff there to orient the new people that are coming on," Idlout said.

To make that point, members of the Nunavut nurses unit – Local 3 of the Nunavut Employees Union – gathered Dec. 3 at noon hour on Iqaluit's Ring Road near the new Qikiqtani General Hospital.

Attracting supportive honks from passing motorists, the picketers cheered, clapped, brandished picket signs and waved a big Nunavut flag.

The latest bargaining session in collective agreement talks between the NEU and the Government of Nunavut was to start that day and continue all week.

Their last collective agreement expired in September 2006. Talks aimed at a new one started in December 2006, but have moved slowly.

Until now, negotiators have not talked about money – a key issue for nurses, who sometimes feel ignored by government and union alike.

But negotiators were expected to start doing that this week.

"We're trying to say to the government it's time to get off the pot and make us an offer here. You're going into negotiations today," said Cheryl Young, the head of Local 3.

And Young said she's encouraged to see NEU officials standing beside her fellow nurses at the information picket.

"It's about time. I guess it's better late than never," Young said. "We want the best quality health care to be delivered to the people of Nunavut and you can't get it without the nurses."

Local 3 now lists 133 members, all nurses. Young said she wants to see that number expanded with the addition of other allied health employees, such as lab workers, X-ray technicians, physiotherapists and pharmaceutical workers.

Doug Workman, the president of the NEU, said he hopes the demonstration will force the GN to recognize that Nunavut needs the "continuous employment" of full time nurses.

As full-time, indeterminate nurses leave Nunavut, the GN replaces them with short-term nurses suppled by private employment agencies.

It's estimated that up to 50 per cent of nursing jobs in Nunavut, especially in the smaller communities, are done by agency nurses who are not union members.

It's believed the GN pays a big premium for those agency nurses, money the union says should be used to better the working conditions of indeterminate nurses.

To fix that, the health minister, Leona Aglukkaq, recently released a recruitment and retention strategy aimed at keeping more permanent nurses on the job.

But that strategy doesn't deal with a key issue: money to help nurses cope with higher staff housing rents and a higher cost of living.

So Workman says that at this week's bargaining session, the union would ask for "something a little bit more than what they presented in the house."

But he didn't say how much more money the NEU would try to get for the nurses, and he said that all NEU members share the same worries about money.

"I just came back from the Kivalliq and those issues resonate with all the membership, including health care professionals – nurses and college instructors alike," Workman said.