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HSN workers ‘stressed to the hilt’ over planned job cuts

Local CUPE president says he’s frustrated over lack of specifics for how Health Sciences North cuts will affect union members
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Dave Shelefontiuk, president of CUPE Local 1623, met last week with HSN administrators to find out how another round of planned job cuts will affect his members. 

Unionized workers at Health Sciences North are “stressed to the hilt,” says the head of a union that represents about 1,150 of them.

Dave Shelefontiuk, president of CUPE Local 1623, met last week with HSN administrators to find out how another round of planned job cuts will affect his members. 

HSN officials have said 51 unionized positions must be trimmed to reach its budget target for 2018-2019 of $505 million with a $4.9-million deficit. HSN has to trim 113 positions in all, many of them management and non-union. More than half of those positions have been cut.

A frustrated Shelefontiuk said this week that the meeting about job cuts offered “zero on specifics. We clearly asked, ‘What does that mean for members?’’ said the union president. “We didn’t get an answer.”

HSN president and chief executive officer Dominic Giroux has told Sudbury.com the cuts will affect all four unions at the hospital, including CUPE and Ontario Nurses Association Local 013.

Shelefontiuk said HSN has not replaced at least six of his members who left jobs recently. While HSN must follow the contract language with its unions and CUPE’s calls for five months’ notice of layoffs, “I don’t think they’re going to give us free money,” he said about paying employees in lieu of notices. “They’re going to make us work it out” or wait for retirements.

Hundreds of job cut over the years have affected the quality of services his members provide, said the union boss. He has worked in the Sudbury hospital system for more than 30 years, 7.5-hour days. If he misses a day now because he is sick, a part-time employee fills in for five hours. Because part-timers tend to be less experienced than full-time ones, “the job’s not getting done,” said Shelefontiuk.

Hospital managers are tasked with “moving the process along” to trim positions, he said, “but what does that mean? Where are we having reductions? You can’t let people hang.”

Shelefontiuk has read the report of the third-party validation review of HSN’s budget ordered by the North East Local Health Integration Network. It talks about “reviewing this program and reviewing that program,” he said.

In some cases, the validation review team cautioned HSN not to cut programs and services but rather to hand them off to community agencies.

When 51 union jobs are cut at HSN, Shelefontiuk does not expect that will be the end of it. He does not believe the provincial government will give budget increases to hospitals in the coming years.

“We’re going to be talking about drastic cuts again. How much can we cut?” he asked. “How do you provide services?”

After long waits in the emergency department, when patients are placed in hospital rooms, services will be cut to the point “you might see your nurse once in awhile, you might get your room cleaned twice a week if you’re lucky,” Shelefoniuk predicted.

He respects the new CEO because he has given unions more information than past CEOs and has eliminated the atmosphere of union employees versus administration that was almost war-like.

Still, “they say they’re gonna do this, they’re gonna do that, but they don’t tell us how they’re gonna do it.”

Unionized employees are hanging in limbo while managers wait until workers retire or leave. Meanwhile, “all kinds of deals” are being made in which workers’ jobs are cut but some return to the hospital with other duties.

 “My head spins in that place now,” he said.

Shelefontiuk represented his union at a joint news conference Monday with Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, the hospital arm of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

Hurley urged the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Doug Ford not to let his promise to pare four per cent from the provincial budget and implement a $7-billion tax cut plan affect hospital budgets.

A cut of that magnitude to HSN’s operating budget could result in as many as 58 bed closures and up to 334 jobs losses, said Hurley.

(Are you an HSN unionized employee worried about whether your job may be cut? If you are, contact Carol Mulligan at [email protected] and tell her about it.)

Carol Mulligan is an award-winning reporter and one of Greater Sudbury’s most experienced journalists.


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