Rally calls on hospital to respect labour order to
provide safe needles
About 50 activists
rallied outside the Humber River Regional Hospital in Toronto Feb. 5 to
speak out against the hospital’s lack of commitment to employee safety.
The hospital is
appealing a Ministry of Labour order to provide safety-engineered
medical devices. More than 100 needlestick injuries have taken place at
the hospital during the last three years.
Patty Rout, Chair of
the OPSEU Health Care Divisional Council, said if this were any other
industry the problem would be corrected by now. More than three-quarters
of OPSEU members at a recent meeting said they had experienced a
needlestick injury – some as many as eight needlestick injuries.
NDP Leader Howard
Hampton told the rally about the McGuinty government’s foot- dragging on
passing Bill 30, an Act to Reduce the Incidence of Needlestick Injuries.
“By comparison, it took just eight days to ram through a 31 per cent
increase in pay for MPPs.”
Wayne Samuelson,
president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, compared the fight for
safe needles to the fight 25 years ago for an Occupational Health and
Safety Act.
“We forced the
government to bring in an Occupational Health and Safety Act. We are
still fighting today to ensure worker safety,” he said.
SEIU President Sharlene
Stewart called for the resignation of HRRH President and CEO Dr. Rueben
Devlin for his disregard of worker
safety.
