FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 30, 2002
Talks stall: OPSEU health workers frustrated
TORONTO – The Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) is asking hospital professionals to agree to unreasonable restrictions on the central bargaining process, delaying the start of bargaining, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).
Talks were stalled as the parties failed to agree on the ground rules traditionally decided before central bargaining begins. Bargaining was scheduled to begin today. The current contract expires March 31, 2002.
“Working conditions across the province vary despite these workers belonging to the same union. We’re fed up with the abhorrent working conditions and the erosion in the service we can provide under a multi-pronged attack on our jobs and the work we do,” said Aimee Axler, chair of the OPSEU bargaining team, and a microbiology lab technologist at Kingston
General Hospital.
OPSEU represents about 10,000 hospital professionals in hundreds of health science professions including X-Ray and Lab Technologists, Social Workers, Pharmacists, Psychologists and Rehabilitation Therapists.
OPSEU President Leah Casselman was in Thunder Bay today and attended a rally in support of the union’s bargaining team. “Ontario’s hospital professionals are in demand across Canada and around the world,” she said. “Our hospitals will be faced with continued severe shortages of these professionals in the health science fields unless conditions improve.
Patients are suffering. But the OHA wants to impose these unfair restrictions for bargaining.”
OPSEU health professionals are concerned that deteriorating working conditions and labour shortages are undermining workers’ health and could put patients at risk.
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For more information, contact:
David Cox, OPSEU Communications: 416-443-8888 x 314 or 416-788-9197 cell
Aimee Axler, Chair Central Bargaining Committee: 613-329-2051 cell
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