• Place an order, or for other inquiries:
  • 416-923-3567 ext. 3325
  • content@newsmediacanada.ca
  • Home
  • Why CommunityWire
  • How It Works
  • Services & Rates
✕

MEDIA ADVISORY: Rage over Ford PC’s wage cap law fueling critical hospital staffing shortage sparks protest at Oshawa’s Lakeridge Health Friday

5 May 2022
Categories
  • English
  • Finance and Business
  • Government
  • Health and Safety
  • Media Advisory
Tags
  • Ontario Council of Hospital Unions / Canadian Union of Public Employees
https://ochu.on.ca/

Event Information

Begins: 6 May 2022 @ 11:30 AM
Location: Oshawa, ON

OSHAWA, ON –/COMMUNITYWIRE/– Outrage at how the Doug Ford government is disrespecting them by capping their wages and the lack of gumption from hospital employers to support them publicly, is sparking renewed protests by nurses, personal support workers, environmental cleaners, clerical and other essential hospital workers throughout May, including at Lakeridge Health (Oshawa) this Friday, May 6, 2022 – 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Ontario hospital staff have endured among the highest COVID-19 workforce infection and burnout rates in the world. Yet, the Ford PC’s have rewarded Ontario’s predominantly female hospital workforce with Bill 124, which, “has cut their real wages by 10% over the last two years,” says Sharon Richer secretary-treasurer of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE).

With the wage cut on top of failing to provide proper personal protective equipment during the pandemic and the back-breaking workloads that come from working in a hospital system with the fewest staff of any developed economy, “many people are just giving up. Hospital workers are saying ‘enough of the disrespect’. Some others are taking another form of protest, they are leaving their jobs altogether,” says Richer.

Vacancies in Ontario hospitals are soaring as Bill 124 artificially supresses the wages for hundreds of thousands of women working in health care.

Data shows that the hospital job vacancy rate has increased from 1.6% at the end of 2015 to 6.3% at the end of 2021. Hospitals and nursing and residential care facilities have over 32,000 job vacancies. Add another 10,350 for ambulatory health care and the total is over 42,000 job vacancies. That is up from about 10,000 at the end of 2015, a four-fold increase. 

Over the 2020 and 2021, registered nurse vacancies more than doubled and registered practical nurse vacancies more than tripled.  Nurse aide and orderly vacancies more than doubled. Other assisting occupations in support of health services saw vacancies more than quadruple.

Hospital staff are also angry that although their senior hospital administrators can see the detrimental impact the wage cap and other PC compensation policies are having on staff morale and attracting and retaining front-line staff, they’ve shown no interest in wage increases in the period after the bill expires or in improving access to personal protective equipment or protecting staff from rising violence.

Protests similar to the one at the Oshawa site of Lakeridge Health are planned for Ottawa (May 9), Sudbury (May 10), Hamilton (May 11).

“It’s time this government take responsibility for the staffing crisis that’s unfolding before our eyes here at our hospital – Lakeridge Health and, at every hospital in the Greater Toronto Area and start to show that they value us by scrapping Bill 124,” says Pam Parks and emergency room registered practical nurse.

-30-

For more information contact:

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

Share

Submit Your News

EVENTS CALENDAR

  • MEDIA ADVISORY: CUPE to hold a rally for Wood Buffalo municipal workers
    23 March 2023
  • MEDIA ADVISORY: CUPE to hold a rally for Wood Buffalo municipal workers
    22 March 2023
  • MEDIA ADVISORY: CUPE Alberta convention opens today in Fort McMurray
    22 March 2023

RECENT RELEASES

  • L’Indice de bonheur au travail d’ADP Canada : une nouvelle mesure mensuelle de la satisfaction de la main-d’œuvre canadienne
    29 March 2023
  • ADP Canada Happiness@Work Index Provides New Monthly Satisfaction Measure for the Canadian Workforce
    29 March 2023
  • Limestone Trustees to Debate Tri-Board Strike
    29 March 2023
  • Ford’s budget risks cutting 7,000 education workers across Ontario
    27 March 2023
  • De nouvelles ressources en littératie numérique visent à renseigner la population canadienne sur la fraude en ligne
    23 March 2023

CATEGORIES

Be seen where the audience is looking
News Media Canada
365 Bloor Street East, 3rd Floor
Toronto, Ontario MrW 3L4

416-923-3567 or toll-free 1-877-305-2262
content@newsmediacanada.ca

© Copyright 2023 News Media Canada. All rights reserved.