Thank you.
I wanted to testify on the everyday conditions of violence experienced in the health sector at all facilities: long-term care centres, hospitals and even patients' homes. That violence is an omnipresent and everyday phenomenon. I am talking here about violence committed against patients in the form of threats, verbal attacks, blows, spitting, scratching and the like. This is the nature of our everyday work. In addition to the violence that certain patients exhibit as a result of the medical hierarchy and the lack of control that health care institutions such as mine have over doctors, unacceptable language, psychological harassment and contempt are factors that female workers deal with every day.
The media occasionally report the tragedy of pregnant women who lose unborn children as a result of violence suffered in the workplace. That's what happened to Ariel Garneau, who lost her unborn child as a result of a blow to the abdomen last winter. Even that kind of incident occurs every day, and when it happens to pregnant women, that violence is so intolerable it is referred to in those terms. It is not so clearly characterized in other instances. Very few measures are taken to prevent it. What's worse, our employers want pregnant women to stay on the job, in increasingly dangerous settings, even longer than was previously the case.
We feel our managers are not adequately held accountable. Staying on budget is the only thing that seems to count, regardless of the consequences for female workers.
This is a particularly insidious form of violence that is experienced in the health sector. It is organizational violence and appears to have two main causes: a sharp increase in workload as a result of budget cuts, and the medical hierarchy and its contempt for female health workers. Reporting is stifled by a conspiracy of silence and threats of punishment.
Organizational violence is a form of violence that causes stress, depression an illness. Many female workers are leaving the health sector. In a small region such as mine, work absences cost more than $40 million. That's enormous.
Female workers are forced to work mandatory overtime, even if they are physically and mentally exhausted, and even if it destroys their family lives. Every week, the union witnesses the tears, crises and distress experienced by female professionals who are required to work overtime under pressure and threats.
Female managers are aware of this violence. In many cases, they are former health professionals and experienced it themselves. The situation gradually tends to be downplayed, the violence is eventually viewed as trivial, no one really deals with the situation, and female health workers ultimately come to view violence as normal. In many cases, they don't even report the situation. The lack of time and excessive workloads also conspire to lower the reporting rate. In my region, we estimate that only 10% of cases are reported. Many factors still need to be understood and much remains to be done.