MEDIA ADVISORY: Underpaid, undervalued but essential: Support for exploited UHN-Hillcrest care staff grows with car cavalcade 10:30 a.m. Saturday

Event Information

Begins: 13 March 2021 @ 10:30 AM
Location: Toronto, ON

TORONTO, ON –/COMMUNITYWIRE/– The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) is joining the growing voices in Toronto critical of the University Health Network’s low-wage labour practices and contracted out care approach at its Hillcrest Reactivation Centre site.

This Saturday March 13, 2021 at 10:30 a.m. a community car cavalcade organized by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) will take place at UHN-Hillcrest located at 47 Austin Terrace in the Bathurst/Davenport area of the city.

Recently personal support workers, nurses and other care staff have been openly vocal about low staffing and patient care levels and the low wages they are paid by the UHN contractor SE Health. No hospital workers in Toronto are paid so little.

“Care work – which in Toronto is disproportionately done by racialized women – must be valued and the back-breaking working conditions must improve. We are urging UHN to immediately make the staff at Hillcrest direct employees of the hospital,” says Michael Hurley president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU/CUPE).

Although the Hillcrest is a reactivation hospital site overseen by UHN and predominantly admits patients directly from your other hospital locations, the staff at Hillcrest are paid between $7 and $13/hr less than other UHN hospital staff doing similar work. They are also denied other working conditions available to UHN employees. Despite working diligently throughout the COVID-19 pandemic they are only provided 3 sick days per year and that is, only if they are full-time employees.

WHAT:  Toronto community car cavalcade in support of exploited UHN-Hillcrest personal support workers, nurses, and other care staff.

WHEN:  Saturday, March 13, 2021 10:30 a.m.

WHERE:  UHN-Hillcrest, 47 Austin Terrace (up the hill from Davenport and Bathurst)

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For more information, please contact:

Stella Yeadon, CUPE Communications, 416-559-9300  syeadon@cupe.ca