Queen’s Park Media Studio, 11:00 a.m., Feb. 10, 2003
Good morning. My name is Leah Casselman. I am the president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.
With me today are Patty Rout and Yves Shank.
Patty is a lab technologist at Lakeridge Health Corporation in Oshawa and the chair of our Hospital Professionals Division as well as a member of the hospital professionals central bargaining team.
Yves is a lab technologist and the vice-chair of our central team. He is also president of our Local 659 at the Sudbury Regional Hospital.
Aimee Axler, the chair of our central team, is unable to be here today. She is at a hearing of the Ontario Labour Relations Board.
About two weeks ago I was here to announce that OPSEU members in 40 Ontario hospitals would be launching a major protest on February 13. We call it the Hospital Emergency Day of Action.
The Day of Action has two goals.
Our first goal is to alert Ontarians to the critical shortage of health professionals in our hospitals, and what this means to health care.
These important people are x-ray technologists, respiratory therapists, physiotherapists, lab technologists, pharmacists, nuclear medicine technologists, MRI technologists, and professionals in over 90 other important professions.
Our second goal with the Day of Action is to get a new collective agreement, as quickly as possible, that properly compensates more than 5,000 hospital professionals who have been without a new contract for over 300 days, since March 31, 2002. A strong new contract, we believe, is the key to alleviating staff shortages in both
the short and long term.
The Day of Action is accomplishing its first goal. We have succeeded in raising the public profile of these key professions. A lot more of our fellow Ontarians are now aware of the damaging impact of staff shortages.
We have not reached our second goal.
Since we announced the Day of Action, OPSEU members have been gearing up to participate in every part of the province.
Two weeks ago, the Ontario Hospital Association, representing the employer, didn’t know if our members were serious. Now they know.
In response, hospitals have threatened our members with discipline, up to and including dismissal.
The OHA has gone to the Ontario Labour Relations Board to charge the union with counseling an illegal strike.
But the OHA has made no move to resolve the real problem – the fact that our members have not received a raise since April 2001 and are grossly underpaid compared to other professionals in their own communities and across the province.
Our purpose here today is to make a simple offer to the employer to relieve the growing anxiety of patients and hospitals as Feb. 13 draws near.
The offer is this: we will ask our members to cancel the Hospital Emergency Day of Action if the OHA will agree to a single unrestricted arbitration for our bargaining units at all 40 hospitals involved in central bargaining.
This is a logical and reasonable approach to settling this dispute.
A single arbitration that allows for wage and other comparisons with all other Ontario hospitals would have several advantages:
· First, it is cheaper for Ontario taxpayers to pay for a single arbitration, rather than 40 separate ones.
· Second, by re-establishing province-wide standards, a single arbitration would help communities keep and attract hospital professionals. It would put an end to the “poaching” of staff by higher-paying hospitals. It would stem the flow of hospital professionals to the private sector and to the United States.
· Third, a single arbitration would be fair to all employees. The principle that central arbitration upholds is the principle of equal pay for equal work.
· Fourth, it would end the uncertainty facing the 34 hospitals that do not currently have arbitration scheduled.
Our proposal is not pie-in-the-sky. It is down-to-earth. The process we are proposing is exactly the same as the one that the OHA uses in contract talks with the Ontario Nurses Association.
The OHA could have agreed to this process last June and avoided the situation in which we now find ourselves. They did not. Instead, they have insisted on a confusing, cumbersome and lengthy process.
Eight months after talks broke down, we only have arbitration scheduled for six of the 40 hospitals, beginning next month.
OPSEU members are getting fed up. So are hospital administrators.
Without a central agreement, frustrated Ontario hospitals have acted unilaterally as well as tried to cut side deals to raise wages for particular occupations at particular hospitals.
This band-aid approach is a recipe for poaching. It will not relieve the shortage – a shortage that the OHA has repeatedly acknowledged – of hospital professionals across the province. It will merely cause staff to quit some hospitals and move to others or the private sector.
Our proposal will keep hospital professionals in every hospital in every community.
Hospital administrators are growing increasingly frustrated with the OHA bargaining team. They are upset about the ongoing staff shortages. They know the importance of these health professionals. They are alarmed at the Hospital Emergency Day of Action. They want to see a speedy settlement.
But instead of resolving the dispute, the OHA has concentrated on trying to intimidate our members and to get its member hospitals to calm down. It is also telling the hospitals one thing and OPSEU another.
Our information is that, in a Feb. 6 conference call, the OHA tried to placate participating hospitals by saying that the awards for the six hospitals currently heading to arbitration would apply to the other 34.
That’s the first we’ve heard of it.
If the OHA has a plan to broaden arbitration, we’d like to hear it before Feb. 13. The ball is in their court.
Our union wants to see this problem resolved now. As we did two weeks ago, we are again calling on Premier Ernie Eves to step in and help the OHA settle this now. The government helped to create this crisis and it has a responsibility to help solve it.
In the meantime, we’ve got some questions for the OHA:
· Do they support the principle of equal pay for equal work?
· Do they really want to end the shortages of hospital professionals?
· Why won’t they agree to a single arbitration that allows comparisons with all other hospitals? If it’s good enough for nurses, why isn’t it good enough for these hospital professionals?
We’d be pleased to take your questions.
Press Release: February 10, 2003 Agree to single unrestricted arbitration and we’ll cancel Day of Action, OPSEU tells OHA
