Challengers in B.C. Nurses' Union election disqualified days before voting begins
Three candidates running against incumbent members of the executive were all disqualified this weekend
On the weekend before voting in the B.C. Nurses' Union election was due to begin, three candidates were disqualified, leading to heated accusations from both sides.
The three candidates for executive positions, Will Offley (president), Sharon Sharp (vice president) and Mary Jean Lyth (treasurer) were all running against incumbents — president Gayle Duteil, vice president Christine Sorensen, and treasurer Sharon Sponton.
The three challengers were running on platform that included reducing the salary and benefits for the president and reinstituting term limits.
But on Friday, all three were disqualified, with a notice posted on the BCNU website by the nominations committee, outlining repeated warnings and sanctions against the candidates.
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"Rather than face their membership in an open and democratic vote, we believe the BCNU leadership has chosen to take the most alarming possible measures to prevent that vote from happening," wrote the group known as "B.C. Nurses Vote For Change".
It means Duteil, Sorensen, and Sponton will face no other candidates in their bids for re-election.
"Posting false information related to other candidates, posting defamatory information related to other candidates, putting patient safety at risk by going onto units and trying to either talk to nurses who were on shift or plastering posters and leafletting the hospitals," said BCNU acting director Umar Sheikh.
"This was a concern raised by the health employers to us very early on saying that they didn't want this to happen, that was part of the rules the election committee had put in place."
More battles to come
It's not the first controversy the union has faced this year: Duteil sued Offley in January, and Offley countersued Duteil in April. And earlier this month, the executive director was put on leave after making what the union termed at the time to be "unacceptable remarks that conflict with BCNU's respectful workplace policies and values."
On Tuesday, Offley, Sharp and Lynch held a news conference outside the emergency entrance at Vancouver General Hospital, and vowed to take their case to the province's Labour Relations Board in an effort to overturn the decision.
Offley said he and the other candidates had been campaigning since April 21.
"We have never posted misleading and false information," he said.
However, Offley said factually incorrect material had initially been posted on hospital wards, but the information was removed when the committee brought the matter to the candidates' attention.
However, he said some material that ended up on wards where the public could see it was posted by individual nurses.
Meanwhile, the nominations committee is recommending the BCNU council to remove the three as members in good standing.
"That doesn't mean you're not a member of the union. You can still have a job. You can still have union representation," said Sheikh.
"But a member not in good standing cannot hold office, seek election in offices, attend meetings as of right. So they have a limited type of membership in the union."
B.C.'s 45,000 nurses are scheduled to begin casting their ballots Tuesday morning, and voting will continue until June 2.
With files from The Canadian Press