News Releases    

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 7, 2003

Tories ignored our warnings on staff shortages

TORONTO - The Minister of Health and Ontario’s hospitals should have listened to our repeated warnings about serious personnel shortages in our hospitals, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) says.

OPSEU, representing 100,000 public employees including 20,000 health care workers, says it warned Ontarians of the serious shortages in our hospitals, compounded by poor pay and needless delays in achieving a new central collective agreement for hospital professionals.

“We held a Day of Action in February because the hospitals and the politicians wouldn’t listen to us at the bargaining table, and wouldn’t deal with professional staff shortages,” OPSEU president Leah Casselman said. (On Feb. 13, at a demonstration at Mount Sinai Hospital Casselman warned “There is a crisis now. It is going to get worse, until they deal with it.”) We fear many hospitals won’t be able to handle the overload now that they are ramping their services back up following the SARS shutdowns.”

Casselman said lack of funds for hospitals, and poor financial decision-making by hospital administrators contributed to the lack of SARS readiness. “We told them to recruit more hospital professionals. They didn’t listen. We told them to fund hospital staff, not just new machines, new buildings and CEO salaries. They didn’t listen. The Minister needs to understand the dangers of cross-contamination when people work in multiple institutions.”

“The health care system can’t just be designed for business as usual. Our hospitals have to be designed to handle crises, even epidemics. To do this we need people - with secure jobs. We need full time staff - not casual and part-time staff working at multiple institutions. Our hospital professionals were already burned out by work overload before this crisis hit.”

“There is still a crisis in our hospitals. It is primarily a personnel crisis. Front-line workers can’t do it alone. What happens when the next epidemic, possibly the West Nile Virus, hits us?”

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For further information:

David Cox, OPSEU Communications: 416-443-8888 (ext 314); 416-788-9197 cell