Private member's bill would end mandatory overtime for Manitoba nurses

A private member's bill introduced by a rookie NDP MLA would ban mandatory overtime for nurses in Manitoba if passed.

On Wednesday, NDP health critic Uzoma Asagwara introduced Bill 205, which would require nurses' employers to stop using mandatory overtime as a routine staffing tool, and would prevent licensing colleges from disciplining nurses who refuse overtime.

Asagwara said the extended hours often mean nurses can't plan child care, relax or debrief after a stressful shift.

"It's really unacceptable. It doesn't create a nursing environment or a health-care environment where nurses can perform at their absolute best," said the NDP's health critic, who is a registered psychiatric nurse.

"It doesn't create an environment where patients are getting the absolute best care and it's not healthy and conducive to folks having an overall work-life balance."

The Manitoba Nurses Union says mandatory overtime is a top concern for its members and has become a growing problem over the last two years, as employers use overtime as a tool to address staffing shortages that it says in many cases were created by government.

"Nurses are exhausted. They are burning out. It is risky because errors increase. Injuries increase," union president Darlene Jackson said.

She said in some cases, nurses are working 24-hour shifts and said at St. Boniface Hospital, the amount of mandatory overtime being worked has tripled since 2017.

Nurses are scared to say no to mandatory OT, she said.

"There always seems to be that threat from employers that if you don't stay for the mandated overtime … you're not completing your duty to care, and there may be repercussions."

The bill introduced Wednesday is modelled on a law passed in New York State that bans mandatory overtime for nurses except in emergency situations.

As a private member's bill introduced by an Opposition member, though, it is unlikely to gain the support of the governing Progressive Conservatives, who hold a majority in the legislature.

The Manitoba Nurses Union is lobbying for bipartisan support for the bill. 

Efforts to 'stabilize' workforce: minister

Manitoba Health Minister Cameron Friesen said the amount of overtime nurses are working has recently gone down. He also argued mandatory overtime was brought in by the former NDP government in 2013.

But he acknowledged there have been significant disruptions in the health-care system as a result of the first phase of the health-care overhaul the Tories started in 2017.

"We're doing everything that we can to stabilize that workforce. We have more nurses working right now then we did only months ago. We have more nurses working in Manitoba than any point in time in the past," he told reporters after question period.

The minister said 200 new nurses have been hired in Manitoba since June to help with the problem, and said vacancies are down 10 per cent.

Jackson said she'd like to see the government's data on the number of new nurses the government claims to have hired.

"Our latest data on vacancies does not reflect that," she said.