Ontario hospital unions, currently negotiating for a new contract, are demanding that Ontario Premier Doug Ford should inject new money into the collective bargaining process so that employees will be able to continue working in the health care sector.
OCHU/CUPE, SEIU Healthcare and Unifor have banded together in the wake of the Auditor General's report last week that harshly criticized the Conservative government for not adequately taking action on the shortage of health workers, many of whom are leaving hospitals and long-term care homes to take more lucrative contract jobs with nursing agencies.
"There were over 200 temporary emergency department closures in the past year due in part to a lack of a comprehensive provincewide strategy to maintain staffing levels," said part of that report.
Similar criticisms came from the Ontario Hospital Coalition (OHC) which reported that hundreds of closures have occurred at emergency rooms, maternity and obstetrics units, outpatient laboratories and intensive care units, all because of the shortage of staff.
The hospital unions — OCHU/CUPE, SEIU Healthcare and Unifor — representing more than 70,000 hospital workers in Ontario, said in a news release that provincial underfunding has been used as an excuse by the Ontario Hospital Association during current negotiations, saying there is little room to address the decline in working conditions and patient care.
Staffing shortages are causing unprecedented closures of emergency rooms and urgent care centres, according to the OHC report, while labour leaders are raising the alarm on long surgical waitlists and a record number of patients receiving “hallway health care”, said the release.
The tri-union coalition is now demanding the Ontario government and OHA come together to find the much- needed funding to save our hospitals by ensuring safe staffing across all classifications, while implementing nurse-to-patient ratios to bring Ontario in line with other jurisdictions such as British Columbia and California, said the release.
The unions said that embedding staffing ratios in the contract would go a long way towards improving working conditions in a sector where exhaustion and burnout has led to a 300 per cent increase in job vacancies since 2015. Safe staffing levels will ensure that healthcare workers are supported to deliver the quality patient care they want to provide, said the release.
