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Questionable firing of Northern Health employee

Letter writer Nick Gottlieb questions the firing of a Northern Health employee over wearing a watermelon t-shirt
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Former Northern Health official Amy Blanding outside the Vancouver Law Courts.

To the editor:

On Friday, May 10, 2024, Northern Health effectively fired an employee, Amy Blanding, for wearing a t-shirt with a watermelon on it at the dress rehearsal of an event that was totally unrelated to her work and occurred outside of work hours.

She has since filed a wrongful dismissal suit against Northern Health, alleging defamation and that her human rights and rights under the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms were violated. The suit also claims constructive dismissal, a condition in which an employer makes changes to working conditions so that an employee then leaves. None of the allegations has been proven in court.

If that sounds absurd to you, it’s because it is: not only does it represent a terrifying new McCarthyism that seeks to control what we can and cannot say, but the process that led up to her firing, and the blowout resulting from it, is also a massive waste of resources for a health organization that can’t even fully staff our brand new hospital here in Terrace.

Northern Health is in a chronic state of crisis, but instead of ensuring rural ERs can stay open all the time and fighting for the resources needed to hire new nurses and doctors, administrators are spending their time chasing spurious claims and firing employees on outrageous grounds that have nothing to do with their performance.

Let me explain what happened a little more clearly. On her own time, Blanding, the now-former executive director of Northern Health’s inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility office, is a musician. She was asked to perform at an event, and during a dress rehearsal, she wore a t-shirt with a watermelon on it, a symbol that has come to be associated with solidarity with the Palestinian people and opposition to their ongoing genocide by Israel.

At least 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, and a study in the journal The Lancet suggests the true death toll could be an order of magnitude higher. Roughly 70 per cent of those dead, according to a UN report, are women and children.

An image of Blanding wearing the shirt appeared on social media, and four people identifying themselves as a community group wrote a letter to Northern Health  suggesting that she was associated with a “Jihadist movement,” and demanding her firing.

Rather than standing up for their employee, or even initiating a genuine investigation into the group’s claims as alleged, Northern Health executives responded by demanding that Blanding read a pre-written apology “to the Jewish community” and share it on her own personal social media, a wild request for an employer of any kind. Blanding was told she would be removed from her position if she refused. This is contained in her Supreme Court filing. She ultimately resigned.

As a member of the Jewish community and as a resident of Terrace who has been unable to get a family doctor for years, I’m appalled by Northern Health’s behaviour. I can’t believe I have to say this, but a watermelon t-shirt is not anti-Semitic, nor is expressing horror at the scale of destruction being wrought against the people of Gaza.

It’s also absurd that Blanding was fired because of a letter written by those with no real interest in our regional health care or the safety of Jews in Canada.

The fact that all of this happened, and that Northern Health is now expending major resources dealing with the legal fallout of it, should be offensive to every one of us struggling to access health care and to every overworked nurse, doctor, and other care provider in the North. Blanding’s legal case against Northern Health is ongoing. You can demand better from Northern Health by contacting Josie Osborne, the new Minister of Health.

We should all be concerned about this attack by a public employer on workers’ rights to express compassion.

Nick Gottlieb,

Terrace, B.C