WATCH: Healthcare workers picket in Surrey as BCNU announces expanded job action

SURREY — Healthcare workers and allies were back on the picket line Thursday morning, this time at Surrey Memorial Hospital and Jim Pattison Outpatient Care Centre and Surgery Centre.

With the British Columbia Nurses' Union and employers at an impasse, job action is set to expand further, with strikes planned across Vancouver Island over the coming days.

According to the BCNU, picket lines will be set up at Victoria General Hospital on Sunday July 12, Nanaimo Regional Hospital on Monday July 13, and Royal Jubilee Hospital and South Island Surgical Centre on Tuesday July 14.

Outside Surrey Memorial, nurses held up signs and encouraged passers-by to honk in support.

"If nurses are cooked, you're cooked," one read, while another paraphrased Ms. Norbury from Mean Girls by asking people to raise their hand if they've been "personally victimized by unsafe patient to nurse ratios."

Among those in attendance was Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions President Linda Silas.

"It is not often that nurses unions have to go on strike, have to be on a picket line," she told Sitka Media. "Nurses across Canada are watching BCNU, and we’re here for the same fight, which is respect, safe working conditions, and safe patient care."

"It's sad," Silas said when asked about BCNU's decision to expand job action out of the Lower Mainland. "You'd think that since July 2 with the first impasse, and then Monday the second impasse, that Premier Eby would have got involved and stopped this from happening."

She argued that the government must intervene, noting that "the employer made it clear to BCNU that they can’t change anything from their last proposal."

"Anybody who goes into our hospitals across this province — and across the country — they realize how the system is stressed," Silas added. "They see the nurses running off their feet not being able to provide the care they want; they know that the system is running on overtime. That is not sustainable."

WATCH: Nurses picket at VGH as fight for fair contract, better working conditions escalates

Gear said she believed the public was “for the most part” on the side of those on the picket lines.

Sitka MediaJarryd Jäger

The first picket line was set up outside Vancouver General Hospital on Tuesday.