Registered Nurses are seeking signatures for an online petition.
Right now ONA is negotiating a contract renewal with OHA, which will affect Registered Nurses employed locally and across the province. ONA released a statement updating the public of the current status of the negotiations. And it was appalling.
It reads as follows:
Ontario nurses say enough is enough following three futile weeks of bargaining with the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA). Contract talks came to an abrupt halt when the OHA team made a final offer which would result in the gutting of our wages, benefits and job security.
The union representing more than 58,000 hospital RNs has been clear from day one that RN workloads and lack of staffing are at crisis levels and something must be done immediately to stop the unprecedented! wave of RN cuts, says ONA President Linda Haslam-Stroud, RN. The current collective agreement between ONA's hospital-sector RNs and their employers expires on March 31.
Haslam-Stroud is appalled at what has been tabled by the employer. She says that, "we will not bargain away our future or our ability to provide quality patient care. Neither are we prepared to devalue the contributions made by these crucial professionals." ONA stands firm in our commitment to negotiate an agreement that fairly reflects the contribution that RNs make to our patients.
Ontario's nurses are calling on the provincial government to give hospitals a wake-up call about the integral role that RNs play in the government's "Patients First" agenda. Registered Nurses have had enough of staffing shortages leading to death and disease, escalating workloads and violence. Nurses continue to suffer from work environments that contribute to the highest injury and illness rates of any profession.
Unsafe RN staffing levels have become more common as hospitals have cut RN positions to balance budgets; increasingly, RNs are finding they are unable to provide care consistent with the standards set by their regulator. Ontario has cut more than 1,200 RN positions in the past 13 months.
The message from Ontario's nurses is crystal clear: Our patients deserve better!
ONA is the union representing 60,000 registered nurses and allied health professionals, as well as more than 14,000 nursing student affiliates, providing care in hospitals, long-term care facilities, public health, the community, clinics and industry.
The above information can be found on ONA.org
Furthermore, there is an online petition to stop the RN cutes that is gaining a lot of steam. It has more than 17,000 online signatures, but has a goal of 20,000. We need the support of the public in order to make a real difference.
The information can be found at morenurses.ca
It reads as follows:
Providing high-quality, universal, public health care is crucial for a fair and thriving Ontario. Yet our health care in Ontario is at risk.
Years of hospital underfunding have resulted in cuts to registered nurses (RNs) and negative impacts on patient care. In 2015 alone, Ontario has lost more than 1.5 million hours of RN care due to cuts. Procedures are being moved from hospitals and offloaded into private clinics that are not accountable under provincial legislation. Funded services are being cut from hospitals and are not being provided in the community.
Cutting skilled nursing care means patients suffer more complications, readmissions and death, costing the system and all of us more. For every extra patient added to the average workload of a registered nurse, the risk of patient complications and death increases by seven per cent.
It doesn't make sense. We shouldn't be trying to balance the books at the expense of the health of the people of Ontario.
We call on the Government of Ontario to:
- Implement a moratorium on RN cuts.
- Commit to restoring hospital base operating funding to at least cover the costs of inflation and population growth.
- Create a fully-funded multi-year health human resources plan to bring Ontario's ratio of registered nurses to population up to the national average.
- Ensure hospitals have enough resources to continue providing safe, quality and integrated care for clinical procedures and stop plans for moving such procedures into private, unaccountable clinics.
