VANCOUVER — BC Nurses Union elections have been marred by disunity after the removal of three candidates' names from the ballot before voting begins.
The candidates vowed to take their case to the province's Labour Relations Board in an effort to overturn the BCNU's decision to return the current president, vice-president and treasurer by acclamation.
Will Offley, Sharon Sharp and Mary Jean Lyth were running under the banner BC Nurses Vote For Change in a bid to claim the union's top three executive positions.
Offley, an emergency room nurse at Vancouver General Hospital, said Tuesday that 47,000 members should have a democratic right to vote for change in an online election that started Tuesday and continues until June 2.
Two other executive council positions are still up for re-election, as are 11 of 20 regional council, or board, positions around the province.
The union's acting executive director Umar Sheikh said the three candidates' names were dropped from the ballot by an independent nominations committee because of campaign misconduct that led to numerous written complaints from members.
He said the candidates undermined the election process by violating signed agreements not to publish false statements in their campaign literature.
"It's going on to units and plastering hospital units with leaflets and other posters and campaign materials," Sheikh said of alleged actions that led to the committee's decision on Monday.
"There's lots of communication that this committee would have had with these candidates regarding this material," he said, adding ongoing problems involved progressive steps taken by the committee over a month and a half.
"It's wasn't a knee-jerk reaction. The five people on this committee are sensitive and alive to the politics that are going on."
After many letters back and forth between both sides, there were plenty of retractions by the candidates but unacceptable material was reposted, Sheikh said.
Offley said he and the other candidates had been campaigning since April 21.
"We have never posted misleading and false information," he said.
However, Offley said factually incorrect material had initially been posted on hospital wards but the information was removed when the committee brought the matter to the candidates' attention.
But some material that ended up on wards where the public could see it was posted by individual nurses, he said.
The candidates had the right to post information in staff lounges, Offley said.
"Three years ago, with the assistance of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, the union won the right to distribute literature in staff lounges, not in patient care areas, not in public areas of the hospital."
