VANCOUVER—On Jan. 14, just one week before nurses across B.C. would vote on a tentative deal with the province in the midst of what many employed in the profession describe as a staffing “crisis,” they received a mass memo from their union president.

The upshot: Stop sabotaging the union with disparaging comments on Facebook; get on board with the tentative collective agreement; and vote in favour to “elevate and advance the profession of nursing.”

“I am profoundly disturbed by the prolific use of Facebook by so many nurses ... to spread misinformation about the proposed contract,” reads the letter from BC Nurses’ Union president Christine Sorensen, obtained through a government access to information request. “In this age of social media and instant messaging, false narratives, racism, and anonymous lies can spread with impunity.”

It was a plea aimed at getting 44,000 union members fed up with chronic overwork and violence against nurses to agree to the terms of a contract negotiated with the province in November 2018. And it came at a time of intense division: Thousands of nurses openly opposed the contract, sharing their opinions online to the point where a Facebook group called “Nurses Engaged” was sometimes called “Nurses Enraged.”

The union had, one month prior, issued a legal letter to one of those nurses telling her to stop posting “defamatory” comments about the contract or risk losing her good status with the union. Firing back, 1,400 people signed a petition supporting the nurse. The union says that conflict has now been resolved.

While Sorensen was rallying support and calling certain criticisms of the agreement “lies,” government officials were interpreting some of the most contentious parts of the contract in the same way as the nurses who were speaking out against it.

Internal communications including memos, emails and text exchanges obtained by Star Vancouver through an access to information request reveal new details about what each of the parties said about the contract at the time the agreement was reached.

The main points of contention in the nurses’ contract were on the issues of workload and health benefits, including the unlimited massage benefit that had attracted media attention during the negotiations, with the union executive director saying it was open to being abused.

An internal memo written by an assistant deputy minister of the Public Sector Employers’ Council Secretariat — the branch of the government that negotiates public sector labour contracts — outlined how changes negotiated to the new contract could help contain costs for the government on those files.

He called it a “foundational reset of some of the key collective agreement provisions that have caused operational and financial concerns in recent years.”

When it comes to workload, many nurses were concerned about having enough staff on each shift, citing chronic shortages leading to overworked nurses and arguably reduced care for patients. They wanted more rigid rules to ensure shifts were filled with qualified people.

According to updates sent by the BCNU through their magazine, nursing shortages were top of mind during the contract negotiations.

But in an email summarizing the agreement that had been reached, assistant deputy minister Chris Rathbone wrote that the union and the employer bargaining committee agreed “to remove the inflexible and costly ‘will replace’ language with a more flexible ‘working short’ premium.”

The notion that the “working short” premium — extra money paid to nurses on understaffed shifts — could allow more flexibility for employers was exactly what nurses who opposed the contract were afraid of. They didn’t want employers to choose to pay a premium to nurses working on understaffed shifts, they wanted them to fill the empty posts.

The BCNU maintains that the premium was not “exchanged” for the more rigid “will replace” language, and would incentivize health care employers to fill vacancies rather than accrue an additional liability.

Also, in the contract, the union and the employers agreed to take all reasonable steps to fill positions before the working short premium would kick in.

Rathbone also referred to the agreement by the BCNU to review the existing health benefits, especially the high expense of massage benefits, as “cost containment,” saying they would be “capped at a set percentage of straight time payroll.”

The agreement obligates the parties to form a committee aimed at making recommendations on how to change the benefit plan. That process, which includes an online survey by the BCNU, is ongoing and members will vote on recommendations in the coming months.

This part of the agreement also drew concerns from nurses who were reluctant to vote in favour of a contract without defined benefit terms.

The B.C. nurses contract, which was renegotiated last January for the first time since 2014, is one of the province’s most expensive labour relations files. It costs the government an average of $112,000 for each of the 44,000 nurses it employs under the contract.

By the time Sorensen sent her letter it was too late to win some nurses over. The fiercest critics of the deal claimed both the province and the union had abandoned hope of finding real solutions for nurses’ concerns about staffing and security. And they saw the tentative agreement on the table as proof.

The deal passed with just 54 per cent voting in favour, and eleven months later the dissidents have not quieted. A Facebook group called “Nurses Engaged” erupted with heated comments between December and January while nurses considered the terms of the collective agreement. The group continues to act as a platform for criticisms aimed at both the province and the union.

Christina Gower, one of the nurses who vocally opposed the contract, heard someone call the Facebook group “Nurses Enraged,” and took up the term to describe herself and other nurses she knows who are dissatisfied.

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“It’s accurate,” she said. “We feel we’ve been left out in the cold by both our employers and our union. We feel stranded.”

“We signed a contract without our benefits being laid out,” Gower said. “Who does that?”

Update — Dec. 18, 2019: This article has been edited from a previous version to include additional information from the nurses’ contract.

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