The CISSS de Chaudière-Appalaches wants to ban sit-ins in the operating room

The CISSS de Chaudière-Appalaches is taking extreme measures to prevent another sit-in from paralyzing the operating room of the Hôtel-Dieu in Lévis. He turns to the Administrative Labor Tribunal (TAT) to ask it to declare this practice illegal and ban it until 2028.

Last Thursday, around thirty nurses and practical nurses refused to work throughout the morning to protest against the cancellation of the increase in their pay in certain circumstances.

They claim that since the fall, the employer no longer pays their night shift hours in overtime when they ask not to work the next morning. Previously, according to them, this practice was accepted by the employer without any monetary penalty being imposed on them.

The pressure tactic led to the cancellation of 25 surgeries which were to take place on Thursday morning. Four of them were still able to be carried out later in the day. The others have been postponed.

The CISSS does not want a situation like this to happen again.

Our request to the TAT is mainly that the means of pressure used by the employees of the operating room of the Hôtel-Dieu in Lévis be declared illegal on the day of January 16 and not to repeat this illegal means of pressure to the entire duration of the collective agreement, i.e. at least until March 31, 2028 and until the right to strike is acquiredwrites by email the public relations officer of CISSS Mireille Gaudreau.

It is impossible at the moment to know whether the judge’s decision will have an impact only on operating room nurses or on all employees with the same collective agreement.

It is before the administrative court that these aspects will be addressed. We cannot assume the decisions that will be rendered at the time of writing these linesspecifies Mireille Gaudreau.

The union, for its part, preferred not to comment on the situation before the hearing.

Liable for contempt of court

If the judge grants this request, the offenders will be exposed to charges of contempt of court, specifies Charles Tremblay-Potvin, professor of labor law at the Faculty of Law of Laval University.

Contempt of court can result in sanctions that are more similar to those seen in criminal law, such as a fine.

According to him, this is an additional lever of dissuasion for the employer, since he could already impose sanctions on the employees who participated in the sit-in.

It can sanction employees who strike illegally, for example, by a warning or a disciplinary sanction. It can even go as far as dismissalhe maintains.

For the moment, the CISSS claims to have only filed complaints with the professional orders of its employees.

Several hospital sit-ins have recently been declared illegal by the TATparticularly in Rimouski and Granby.