NCRHA refutes nurses’ union shift claims

The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) has strong­ly con­demned state­ments made by the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA), dis­miss­ing claims re­gard­ing its nurs­ing staff shift arrange­ments as false and mis­lead­ing. In a state­ment re­leased on Wednes­day, the NCRHA de­nied as­ser­tions that nurs­es were as­signed to work four-hour shifts or suf­fered fi­nan­cial dis­ad­van­tages.

The au­thor­i­ty clar­i­fied that it op­er­ates un­der a two-shift sys­tem con­sist­ing of eight-hour and 12-hour shifts, and has not in­tro­duced any four-hour shift struc­ture. Ac­cord­ing to the au­thor­i­ty, the con­tro­ver­sy stems from a flex­i­ble arrange­ment in­tro­duced by the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Nurs­ing to ac­com­mo­date a small group of staff mem­bers fac­ing health, per­son­al, or trans­porta­tion dif­fi­cul­ties.

This ini­tia­tive ap­plied to rough­ly three per­cent of the au­thor­i­ty’s work­force of more than 1,000 nurs­es. The NCRHA stat­ed that the arrange­ment was in­tend­ed to help these nurs­es com­plete their re­quired 40-hour work week, with most con­tin­u­ing to work eight-hour shifts while the re­main­ing four hours were han­dled through ex­ist­ing pool arrange­ments.

The health au­thor­i­ty high­light­ed that nei­ther the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Nurs­ing nor se­nior man­age­ment re­ceived any for­mal com­plaints from the nurs­es in­volved in the ac­com­mo­da­tion. It main­tained that all op­er­a­tional ad­just­ments re­mained strict­ly with­in es­tab­lished ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­to­cols. The NCRHA al­so re­fut­ed claims made by the TTNNA re­gard­ing a short­age of nurs­ing staff.

The au­thor­i­ty re­port­ed that it re­cent­ly hired more than 100 nurs­es, which ex­pand­ed its work­force and de­creased its re­liance on pool staff. Ad­dress­ing the mo­ti­va­tion be­hind the pub­lic state­ments, the au­thor­i­ty sug­gest­ed that the claims might be tied to the TTNNA’s up­com­ing na­tion­al elec­tions.

The NCRHA not­ed that the as­so­ci­a­tion is not a recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union for its work­force and, as a re­sult, the au­thor­i­ty is un­der no oblig­a­tion to en­gage in for­mal ne­go­ti­a­tions with the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­gard­ing bar­gain­ing units. Reaf­firm­ing its po­si­tion, the NCRHA stat­ed that its ac­tions com­plied with all rel­e­vant laws, reg­u­la­tions, and em­ploy­ment oblig­a­tions.

In re­sponse to what it char­ac­terised as dam­ag­ing pub­lic al­le­ga­tions, the au­thor­i­ty an­nounced that it is cur­rent­ly re­view­ing le­gal reme­dies to safe­guard its rep­u­ta­tion and the rep­u­ta­tion of its of­fi­cers. The NCRHA em­pha­sised its on­go­ing com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing its nurs­ing staff, main­tain­ing pa­tient care stan­dards, and op­er­at­ing with fair­ness and trans­paren­cy.