All-out rallies demand “safe staffing ratios now!”

From Windsor to Dryden, Ottawa to Owen Sound – and cities and towns in between – ONA members hosted 26 all-out rallies outside their hospitals on March 20 as part of our hospital bargaining campaign in the lead-up to arbitration in April. The intent was to pressure hospital CEOs to agree to implement nursing ratios in our new hospital collective agreement by making their voices heard.

And they certainly did! Undeterred by a sudden downward turn in the temperature and, in some locations, heavy rain, hundreds of members – some of whom were accompanied by their family and friends (furry and otherwise)carrying hard-to-miss ONA branded and handmade signs –  chanted their displeasure within earshot of their CEOs. 

“We’re here because we want our hospital CEOs to know this is extremely important to us,” Amanda Anderson, Bargaining Unit President of St. Joseph’s Health Centre in Guelph, said at her rally. “When we have safer patient ratios, we are able to provide better quality of care for our patients and reduce emergency department closures and wait times. For every additional patient that nurses get, there is a 7 per cent increase in death or severe complications.” 

Considering the size of her Bargaining Unit (fewer than 50 members), she said she was very pleased with the rally turnout, which included retired community member Trieneke Niemeyer, who explained, “I’m here today to support nurses, safe staffing ratios, our public health-care system and good wages. I worked with nurses at many points in my career and they deserve better.”

Ontario currently has no nurse-to-patient ratios mandated in our hospitals and needs 25,000 RNs just to catch up to the national average. Such ratios are in place in several other North American jurisdictions.

“In places like British Columbia where nurse-to-patient ratios are mandated, they do work,” Halton Healthcare Services Vice-President Riman Gill said at her rally outside Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. “We want to feel safe when we come to work and leave feeling like we’ve done everything for our patients.”

One unit representative we are keeping anonymous told us her hospital is “extremely understaffed all the time. If one person calls in sick, the team leader may have to pick up eight patients, and that’s just way too many.”

Another member added that a sick call on her large medical unit, where the standard is five patients per nurse on a fully staffed day, means “we have to take nurses from another floor, which can cause animosity. We’re burned out and tired, and we go home at the end of the day completely defeated.”

It’s no wonder then that she says that nurses at her hospital are quitting, retiring earlier than originally planned and that recruitment is a constant problem. Gill concurs, noting, “two or three years of nursing and they’re done.”

“If we had safe staffing, I think they’d come back,” Guelph General Hospital Bargaining Unit President Maggie Jarvis said amongst the constant honking of horns of passing vehicles at her rally. “We need this desperately.” 

And while the rallies were directed at hospital CEOs, members are well aware of who is holding the purse strings.

“We don’t want privatized care,” said Anderson, referring to Premier Doug Ford’s propensity for lining the pockets of his corporate buddies instead of investing in public health care. 

“Nurses have standards they must meet and we need appropriate government funding so we can properly staff our hospitals and patients can get the care they need,” added member Jennifer Dorling, from ONA025. “We’re here today because we are all united on this.” 

That includes staff, students and the ONA Board of Directors, who attended rallies in their regions throughout the province. In fact, at a downtown Toronto rally, St. Michael’s unit representative Gloria Cardinal Tan brought a group of nursing students she is working with, who led chants and said a few words. After all, we know that when hospitals are understaffed and losing experienced nurses, newer nurses, including many recent graduates, are left to take care of patients without the training and mentorship they need.

We were also strongly supported at our rallies by non-Conservative politicians and our union allies waving their flags.

“Health-care workers are overworked and under-appreciated, many are burning out, and the result is that hallway health care continues to worsen across the province," Green Party of Ontario Leader Mike Schreiner told the rally outside of Toronto General Hospital, adding he wanted to show solidarity with nurses. “It’s time to put people over profits in health care, stop the privatization and care for the workers who care for us.”

Janice Folk-Dawson, a retired CUPE member and NDP candidate in the federal election, attended the two Guelph rallies and said she has been “absolutely blown away by ONA the past couple of years and how you’ve been stepping up for health care, fighting for other people and making sure the public understands that what happens to ONA members ripples down to other union members and ripples up to other health-care workers. 

“You’re really making the case that it’s a whole team of people that makes our health-care system work and I am proud of the work that ONA has been doing. And I love the change in your logo. It’s brilliant and getting people talking. I’m really impressed at where ONA has taken your role in the labour movement and the health-care system.”