A bill to protect health care workers from workplace violence is being reintroduced in the legislature.
NDP MPP Frances Gelinas says her private member’s bill would protect them from reprisal for speaking out against violence or harassment.
“No one should have to work or worry about being assaulted. Even more so, no one career should be negatively affected for raising concern about their personal safety, about their dignity,” says Gelinas.
A study by the Canadian Union of Public Employees found that 63 per cent of hospital workers were subjected to physical violence.
Forty-nine per cent indicated they faced sexual harassment on the job while 36 per cent said they experienced sexual assault.
“Unfortunately, in many Ontario hospitals and other health care settings, workplace violence is too often swept under the rug. Nurses and other health care workers are left to feel like they’re being told that physical and verbal harassment is just part of the job. Violence should never be part of the job,” says Gélinas.
Dave Verch, a vice-president with the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, supports the bill.
He says many workers now are reluctant to bring complaints forward.
“This bill now shines a light on the problem. There’s a venue now to express these issues, bring them forward to the employer to take action. If the employer doesn’t, then absolutely the union is there to support the worker as well,” says Verch.
The same bill reached only a first reading in the last legislative session.
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