The Administrative Labour Tribunal (ALT) has ruled that the FIQ-Syndicat des professionnelles en soins de la Mauricie-et-du-Centre-du-Québec must stop its pressure tactics, which include threatening nurses with mass resignation.
In her decision handed down on Saturday, Judge Myriam Bédard ordered the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ) "to stop encouraging and inciting its members to resign en bloc."
She prohibited workers from resigning in the mobilization effort and required them to withdraw their resignations filed in the context of pressure tactics.
The tribunal found that these measures deprive or are likely to deprive the population of a service to which it is entitled.
The CIUSSS de la Mauricie-et-du-Centre-du-Québec recently announced forced changes to nurses' work schedules. This would include the imposition of having to work certain weekends.
"According to the employer, these measures are intended to relieve staff who provide continuous care and to reduce the use of compulsory overtime," reads a Tribunal document. "After the CIUSSS announcement, the staff began to put pressure on. They started to stop recording computer data in the patient's file. This information would, among other things, identify the number of patients, the reasons for consultations, the level of alternative care or the management of patient departures. This resulted in 'distorting ongoing audits or even delaying the release of hospital beds."
The Labour Administrative Tribunal ruled that employees must immediately stop refusing to enter certain data into the systems as this is detrimental to the quality of service to which patients are entitled.
Last week the FIQ presented its action plan at a special meeting in response to the employer's impositions. The union announced to the CIUSSS the intention of its members to resign en bloc if it did not back down.
The FIQ planned to file the resignations on Feb. 27 if it could gather 500 signed letters.
Before the tribunal, the union argued that the resignation of employees is a right to privacy protected by the charters of rights and freedoms. It argued that an individual resignation is a matter of privacy and cannot be prohibited.
However, Justice Bédard did not accept these arguments, finding that the action was more akin to "a strike in disguise."
Although the letters of resignation were signed "by each of the employees who took part in this concerted action, the resignations were not individual in the sense alleged since they derived their intended effect from being given en masse."
The tribunal orders the FIQ members "to perform their normal work until the agreements are renewed."
The workers' collective agreement will expire on March 31, 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Feb. 25, 2023.
