\n<\/p>\n
For years, healthcare staff in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador have felt overworked and under-appreciated. Turnover, burnout and thinning resources were pushing workers in the sector to a breaking point.<\/p>\n
So when the email titled \u201cJune Holiday\u201d arrived in thousands of inboxes, they felt a moment of overdue joy.<\/p>\n
The message thanked them for their professionalism and their work ethic, citing hundreds of <\/strong>hours of recent mandatory overtime to implement a new digital platform called CorCare. The email said the province \u201crecognizes the work employees have carried through a significant period of change\u201d, and, as a token of appreciation, it promised to reward them with a paid day off.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you for the care, professionalism, and commitment you continue to bring to N.L. Health Services and to the people and community we serve,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n Recipients were told to simply click a link to register for the \u201cJune Holiday\u201d on offer. The email was sent to staff from an outside domain: remailmail.com.<\/p>\n It was a sign that anyone hoping for a well-deserved day off was about to be disappointed.<\/p>\n The following day, they were informed that the message \u2013 and their paid vacation day \u2013 was in fact part of an internal cybersecurity test to track employees who clicked on the link.<\/p>\n When staff, many of whom were denied time off during the rollout of CorCare, learned they\u2019d been tricked, their reaction was disbelief and anger.<\/p>\n One union president said he and others were \u201cdisgusted\u201d at the \u201ccruel hoax\u201d that targeted fatigued workers.<\/p>\n \u201cOur members deserve better than to be taunted with the promise of a day off after the incredible amount of work and sacrifice they made to get CorCare up and running,\u201d Jerry Earle, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees, said in a statement.<\/p>\n Earle also said that at least one person had quit after the email, calling it a \u201cstraw that broke the back\u201d for burned-out employees.<\/p>\n Yvette Coffey, president of the Registered Nurses\u2019 Union Newfoundland and Labrador, echoed those frustrations, telling CBC News that the stress associated with mandatory overtime, combined with denied vacation requests for time off, had led people to quit during the rollout of CorCare.<\/p>\n She called the test \u201cvery insensitive and very disrespectful to our members\u201d and called for and someone \u201cto be held accountable for this one\u201d.<\/p>\n Hospitals and healthcare networks across the country have become a target for hackers, who can freeze entire systems in pursuit of ransoms. Newfoundland in particular had good reason to worry about the threat of \u201cphishing\u201d, where malicious links are hidden in seemingly innocuous emails: in 2021, a cyber-attack took certain healthcare computer systems in the province offline for months.<\/p>\n Officials quickly apologized for last week\u2019s particular email, however, calling for an internal investigation into how it was sent.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are taking a step back to review how these exercises are developed and communicated to ensure they reflect the respectful and supportive culture we strive to foster,\u201d wrote Ron Johnson, the health board\u2019s interim CEO. He later told reporters that the test \u201creally missed a mark\u201d and was \u201cnot reflective of how we value our employees\u201d.<\/p>\n Other union leaders said the apology fell short of capturing the profound disappointment of staff.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile I understand that cybersecurity awareness is important, especially in a healthcare setting, targeting a benefit like paid time off is disgusting,\u201d said Sherry Hillier, the CUPE Newfoundland and Labrador president, in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cThese workers are tired, burned out, and desperate for time off. As the employer, NL Health knows that and chose to exploit that feeling anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For years, healthcare staff in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador have felt overworked and under-appreciated. Turnover, burnout and thinning resources were pushing workers in the sector to a breaking point. So when the email titled \u201cJune Holiday\u201d arrived in thousands of inboxes, they felt a moment of overdue joy. The message thanked them<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[318,4530,14782,131,5666,11130,3194,7934,3716,1529,7572,2161],"class_list":{"0":"post-50569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-canadian","10":"tag-cruel","11":"tag-day","12":"tag-decry","13":"tag-email","14":"tag-healthcare","15":"tag-hoax","16":"tag-paid","17":"tag-promises","18":"tag-scam","19":"tag-staff"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}