CFNU President Report: "We Know How to Bargain and Represent Our Members"
BCNU convention delegates welcomed special guest Linda Silas on the first day of their annual meeting.
Silas is president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU). She began her address by acknowledging that BCNU’s more than 48,000 members have re-joined CFNU to unite with nearly 200,000 other unionized nurses and nursing students across the country.
She also congratulated BCNU’s recent success at the bargaining table and said BC’s competitive compensation and commitment from the province to a staffing model that includes nurse-patient ratios is now the envy of nurses across the country.
She said this success was no accident.
“Nurses are the best labour movement in BC and we are the best labour movement in Canada because we are strong and we are credible,” she argued.
“We know how to bargain and represent our members.”
Silas said there was cause for celebration, but also spoke to the struggles nurses are facing in BC and across the country, noting that keeping nurses in the profession is the number one priority facing policy makers.
“It’s worse today than it was during the pandemic,” she remarked. “Before, we were working as if we were all intensive care nurses. Now, we are an aging, burnt-out workforce looking for the exit sign.”
Silas cited CFNU’s latest national survey, which found that 24 percent of nurses are considering leaving their job.
“We have to get back the joy of loving our job, the joy of loving nursing,” she said.
Silas told delegates that nurses must be part of the solution and reported that CFNU’s advocacy is focused on the three “Rs” of nurse workforce sustainability: retain, return and recruit.
She noted that CFNU is now working on research with Queen’s University into the impact of agency nursing as a major problem, and not a solution to the crisis.
“We need to ensure nurses are no longer working 24-hour shifts while also ending the use agency nursing.”