Date: 2020
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Joyce Pui-Porretta was born and raised in Brunei in Southeast Asia. She studied nursing in England followed by a postgraduate program in mental health. Arriving in Edmonton where she had family in 1989, she joined the University of Alberta Hospital as a psychiatric nurse but was moved to the Edmonton Mental Health Clinic downtown during a 1990s restructuring. She’s been involved with community mental health ever since, handling both clinic visits and home visits. Her union involvement began at U of A with the Staff Nurses Association of Alberta, which later merged with UNA. Concerned about racial discrimination that Indigenous and racialized nurses face in the province, she became active in Ethnically Diverse and Indigenous Workers of Alberta in UNA and became a representative for Workers of Colour at the AFL. Joyce Pui-Porretta also serves as her unit representative in UNA. She describes the problems both the workers and clients of mental health services experienced with the Klein cuts and more recently the Kenney cuts. During COVID she fought with Alberta Health Services for appropriate masks and cleaning materials. She denounces the UCP’s lack of consultation with nurses over pensions, strike rights, and staffing issues. She notes that nurses sometimes work 16-hour shifts.
Keywords: Brunei; Community mental health; Ethnically Diverse and Indigenous Workers of Alberta, AFL; Klein cutbacks; Psychiatric nursing; UCP cutbacks; University of Alberta Hospital; Workers of colour and UNA.
Transcript: Download PDF
See also: Occupational Health and Safety in Alberta; Systemic Racism in Alberta; United Nurses of Alberta; Women and Work in Alberta