B.C. nurses allege employer threats and intimidation due to job action
Published 10:18 am Tuesday, July 7, 2026
Striking nurses are reporting “widespread employer intimidation” as job action ramps up.
“Nursing managers have started to threaten nurses, saying, ‘If you don’t clean a stretcher or if you don’t pick up something or stock something — these sorts of extra duties — then we’re going to report you to the College,’” B.C. Nurses’ Union President Adriane Gear told Black Press Media on Tuesday, July 7. “It’s been a lot of bullying and intimidation at the workplace.”
Nurses have filed more than 1,400 reports of intimidation since job action began on July 2. These nurses say they are being threatened with discipline, told they could lose their licences and being forced to work overtime or perform non-nursing duties.
Gear said patient care is a protected essential service that will continue, but it is the striking workers’ right to refuse to perform extra duties.
“The fact that the employer is taking this time to intimidate people as opposed to focusing on doing those tasks themselves is a problem,” Gear said.
The union is expanding job action in response, planning to set up picket lines on Thursday at Surrey Memorial Hospital and the Jim Pattison Outpatient Care and Surgery Centre. Picket lines were already up at Vancouver General Hospital on Tuesday.
Attorney General Niki Sharma was asked about the allegations of intimidation at an unrelated news conference on Tuesday.
“Of course, we’re a government that supports the right of workers to strike and the power of labour to improve working conditions for people,” she said. “And we hope that at the collective bargaining table, all issues can be resolved.”
More to come.