No-poaching clause means travel nurses can't accept jobs in N.L.

The Registered Nurses' Union of Newfoundland and Labrador is appalled that the provincial government included a clause in private-agency nursing contracts preventing some nurses from staying and working in the province's public health-care system. 

President Yvette Coffey said she became aware of the issue when a nurse who was employed by a private agency inquired about taking a permanent, full-time position in the public system.

"He was not allowed to take a position in Newfoundland and Labrador for upwards of 12 months after he finished his contract with the private agency," Coffey said.

After some investigation, the union discovered that were are four or five agency contracts that all have limitations between 6-12 months denying a nurse the ability to take a job in Newfoundland and Labrador's public health-care system.

One private agency's contract requires a nurse to be disconnected from a private agency for more than a year before they can work in Newfoundland and Labrador. If breached, the province pays a hefty fine. 

"If one of those nurses comes and takes a job in their public health-care system, we — as a government — have to pay between $5,000 or a or full year's salary [to the private company]," Coffey said.

Coffey said there is no logical rationale for restrictions that she said "handcuffs" the province from hiring nurses and nurse practitioners.  

"It's appalling," she said. 

When COVID-19 was raging, Coffey said she was involved in conversations with the province to bring more travel nurses here. 

"I was told at that meeting that there was a clause in the contract that would prevent the agency from poaching our nurses out of the public sector, and also from poaching our graduates, our new nursing graduates, for up to a year. Nobody told me that it was also reciprocal with the company, and that we could not hire their agency nurses into our publicly funded health-care system."

Coffey noted that the province is working to recruit nurses from India, Ireland, the Philippines, but has restricted itself from hiring the people who are already here and ready to work.  

Debbie Molloy, vice-president of N.L. Health Services, said when the contracts with private nursing agencies were signed peak-pandemic, the health authority's hands were tied. 

"We do have contracts with a number of different agencies and they have what's called a non solicitation clause," she said. 

"It actually protects us because agencies cannot hire either nurses who work with us within the province, or we actually extended that to also be students who are graduating."