With regard to the recent news article, SRH
hires dishwashing service, on behalf of the members of the food
services department and the rest of the members within CUPE
Local 1623 of the Sudbury Regional Hospital, (we wish to inform
you) we already provide a dishwashing service and we are
against the "contracting out" of this service.
This is CUPE work, and it doesn't appear to
say anywhere in the article that there will be a large
reduction of hours across the 40 to 60 employees within the
department. The hospital didn't release that info, did
they?
We have estimated from the information
provided by the director of facilities management that there
will be a reduction of approximately 10,000 to 20,000 hours of
work.
That is a definite impact on the employees,
no matter what cost savings they seem to think they will
achieve.
And in contracting this service out, they
will have to pay for this service monthly, yearly or open-ended
because they never plan to bring it in-house again, and at what
cost?
Because of the upcoming "breakdown" of the
old dishwasher machine and having to replace it, the capital
cost of the purchase of a new dishwasher is
not the question. That could be spread out
over several years.
The renovation of the Memorial site to
accommodate a new dishwasher is the question. The hospital says
it will cost $400,000 to renovate, and then the machine will
have to move when we go to one site. So the savings of $150,000
a year over the next three years until we get to one site, as
the hospital states, would be $450,000, which we could use to
renovate, keep it in-house and move it with us when we go to
one site.
In the original plans for the one-site
hospital, there was a dishwasher room, so where did it go? And
why is it gone?
CUPE has lost, through attrition,
eliminations of positions and layoffs for the first year of the
recovery plan about 73,900 hours (of work). That had
hit us directly on the front line.
CUPE has had major increases in workload,
sick time and injuries because of these cuts. What cost savings
does that bring at the end of the day?
CUPE's services to the patients and community
have been and will continue to be eroded, and it will be
inherent in that erosion that services will be directly
impacted.
The hospital administrator spoke of it making
"good business sense" for the hospital. Well, we have a
question for SRH.
If it is good business sense, as you have
told us over the last year when one of our members leaves and
not been replaced, why, when one of the management team leaves,
the same does not apply?
Joanne Arnold
President, CUPE Local 1623