Union says Ontario nurses can't be forced to wear masks
Keith Leslie, The Canadian Press
Sep 10, 2015

[snip]

The Ontario Nurses Association says hospitals will no longer be allowed to shame health-care workers into getting a flu shot following an arbitrator’s ruling striking down a “vaccinate or mask” policy.

About 30 Ontario hospitals implemented the policy, which forces nurses and other hospital workers to wear an unfitted surgical mask for the entire flu season if they do not get the influenza vaccine, ONA president Linda Haslam-Stroud said Thursday.

The test case was against the Sault Area Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie, which tried to use the policy to boost their staff immunization rates, added Haslam-Stroud.

“They were basically coercing and shaming nurses into getting the influenza vaccine if they individually chose not to take it,” she said. “They made them all wear masks and they had little stickers on their name tag that everyone knew meant ‘I don’t have my vaccine.”

(Now read this key section of the report)

...Arbitrator Jim Hayes found the “vaccinate or mask” policy was unreasonable, and “a coercive tool” to force heath-care workers to get the flu shot.

Experts testified that it was illogical to force healthy nurses to wear masks, and Hayes concluded the masks were not protecting patients or nurses from the flu.

“The sad part about it is it was giving our patients a false sense of security, and we knew that,” said Haslam-Stroud.