Nurses rally by the hundreds to say Manitoba's health-care system hasn't improved under NDP
Government 'is going to keep listening to them and taking action': Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara
Nurses crammed the steps of the Manitoba Legislature and brought along a cheeky slogan to try to capture the attention of a provincial government they say is excluding them.
"Same shift, different day," hundreds of nurses chanted in unison Wednesday afternoon, while carrying signs relaying the same slogan but with the letter "f" in "shift" crossed out.
Darlene Jackson, president of the Manitoba Nurses Union, said the sassy slogan was crafted with one audience in mind.
"What we're finding is the only way we get the government's attention is by actually either shaming them or coming out and being edgy and very pointed," she told reporters.
Before the NDP was elected in 2023, Jackson said the union was fielding "continuous phone calls" from the then opposition party, which said fixing the province's beleaguered health-care system would be its top priority.
But 18 months later, "we hear from our nurses on a daily basis that we are not seeing any appreciable change to health-care," said Jackson.
Their frustrations boiled over at the rally, where nurses clad in pink waved signs, chanted and shouted.
Their central message: the health-care system hasn't improved in any noticeable way, despite what the NDP government is saying.
"Too many of us are leaving shifts with hearts heavy, bodies broken and nothing left to give," Jackson told the rally, prompting some nurses to shout "shame."
"It's the same damn shift every single day."
Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara was in the crowd, and after the rally heard from one nurse who was disappointed Premier Wab Kinew wasn't in attendance as well.
When asked by reporters about the message nurses were sending, Asagwara said it was "important" to hear.
"I know that nurses want more, and they deserve more," the minister said.
"Our government is going to keep listening to them and taking action so that we can make health care the best place it can possibly be."
Almost 600 new hires: minister
Asagwara said the province has hired nearly 600 net new nurses over the last year, but the nurses' union repeated that its members haven't seen a difference in their workload.
Kimberly Ross, a psychiatric nurse at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre, said her working conditions have worsened in the last year and a half.
She worries violence against nurses is becoming normalized.
"Nurses are traumatized. The things that we have to witness and the things that we have to endure, unfortunately, are toxic and terrible."
Jackson said the union has been trying to sit down with government to discuss its issues, but "we have been absolutely frozen out."
"We're not going to continue to keep nurses in health care if we don't change culture. That was a huge promise made, and nothing's happened to change culture," she said.
"We have to speak out, and we have to be edgy to get what we need."
Disagreement over last meeting
Jackson alleged she hasn't had a face-to-face meeting with Asagwara in "months," which Asagwara later disputed by saying the two met last Friday.
A union official explained the two were in the same room for a committee, chaired by Tuxedo MLA Carla Compton, involving both the nurses' union and government. But that doesn't count as a meeting between the two of them, the union official said.
One area Jackson and Asagwara both agreed on is a desire for progress around nurse-patient ratios.
B.C. and Nova Scotia have worked to develop guaranteed staffing levels, and a few speakers at Wednesday's rally recommended the same tactic in Manitoba.
In the last round of contract negotiations, Manitoba's nurses successfully bargained for a committee to study the idea.
Asagwara told reporters they expect to receive recommendations from the union by early next year.
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