Will refuse overtime, N.L. nurses say while deferring strike action

The union representing Newfoundland and Labrador's nurses said Tuesday its members won't work overtime next week, although it stopped short of declaring a full-fledged strike.

However, the Newfoundland and Labrador Nurses' Union, which announced on Saturday that 63 per cent of voting members rejected a final government offer, said nurses will not "abandon their patients" if they finish a shift and no one is available to relieve them.

The union said it is launching an "overtime strike" that it says will have a direct impact on the health-care system.

"We believe this will be an effective job action as our health-care system is sustained by nurses working overtime," union president Debbie Forward said in a statement.

"So, while nurses are prepared to work their regularly scheduled shifts, the question is whether government and employers will be able to operate the system without nurses working that overtime."

The union is still eligible to give a formal strike notice to Treasury Board and regional authorities.

Nurses recognize possible patient concerns: union head

Meanwhile, Forward said her members know a strike, if it goes ahead, would be difficult for patients who depend on their services.

"You can't take some 50 per cent of nurses out of the system without it having an impact on patients and wait times," Forward told CBC News.

Union leaders met Monday to plan their next move. By law, the union must give seven days notice before a strike can begin.

At a news conference on Tuesday, the union called again for binding arbitration, which government has dismissed out of hand.

The dispute has boiled down to two demands that the Newfoundland and Labrador government is insisting nurses accept in their new contract.

In one, health authorities would be allowed to pay a newly hired nurse more than peers in the same area, so long as the post meets the criteria of being hard to fill. The union considers this demand a threat to the very essence of collective bargaining.

The second, known as extended earnings loss, would mean that a nurse would lose his or her job two years after being deemed permanently disabled.

Forward said the next move belongs to government.

"Right up until the day of a strike, we will still be willing to let a third party decide here, and let us avoid a nurses strike," she said in an interview.

That appears, at least for now, to be unlikely.

Finance Minister Jerome Kennedy, also president of Treasury Board, said this weekend that the government is holding to its position that binding arbitration is not an option government is willing to consider.

Kennedy said health authorities are preparing for a strike that could last longer than a month.

In 1999, the government of then Premier Brian Tobin used the legisature to force nurses back to work after a nine-day strike.

Under essential workers' agreements, many nurses will be required to keep working during a strike, to staff emergency, intensive-care and other units. Many other services, though, will be cancelled.