Hospital workers protest staff cuts and patient harm caused by Ford government’s underfunding

BURLINGTON, ON –(COMMUNITYWIRE)– CUPE health care workers at Joseph Brant Hospital held a demonstration today protesting job cuts that pose serious risks to patient care and expose the government’s policy of underfunding hospitals. The hospital is eliminating 10 frontline positions: seven housekeepers, an operating room assistant, and an occupational therapist- all vital to patient care.

Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE), which represents 50,000 staff across the province, said the union sees an alarming pattern of staffing cuts to hospitals in Ontario because of provincial underfunding – a startling development considering the

2,000 patients waiting on stretchers daily in hospital hallways for beds and the 250,000 people waiting for surgeries in Ontario.

“Doug Ford’s government is cutting hospital budgets,” said Michael Hurley, president of OCHU-CUPE. “At a time when the Conservatives should be focused on meeting demand by opening new beds to reduce hallway healthcare, to cut wait-times and improve care, they are cutting funding and staffing. Hospitals like Joseph Brant are left cutting frontline positions to balance their budgets and patients are denied access or kept waiting for care. Frontline hospital staff just won’t accept that for our patients.”

Research by OCHU-CUPE estimates that on average hospitals across Ontario should be increasing hospital staffing by about five per cent annually to meet rising demand.

Jacqui Curtis, registered practical nurse and president of CUPE 1065, said there was a dire need for more staff at Joseph Brant, as workplace morale was plummeting due to heavy workloads.

“We are seeing a growing volume of patients without a corresponding increase in staffing,” she said. “The decline in our working conditions is causing higher levels of exhaustion, anxiety, and burnout.”

Earlier this year, a survey commissioned by OCHU-CUPE found that a large percentage of the union’s hospital sector members were struggling with mental health issues as a direct result of their poor working conditions (62 per cent said they had high stress levels and 44 per cent said they had trouble sleeping).

“Frontline workers are critical to the functioning of a hospital, but it seems that this government has it in for us,” Curtis said. “You’d think the government would be investing in improving our working conditions and providing us resources to best serve patients. Instead, they cut our salaries with Bill 124 and demand that we do more and more with less – which is why we have a staffing crisis. These new cuts will drive more staff to leave and force patients to wait and wait.”

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For more information, please contact:

Zee Noorsumar, CUPE Communications
znoorsumar@cupe.ca
647-995-9859