Unions call on Ontario to act amid health care staffing shortages, ER closures
CBC
Unions representing some 70,000 hospital workers in Ontario are renewing their calls for the province to address staffing shortages contributing to recent emergency room closures, suggesting measures such as raising wages and putting in financial incentives to boost hiring.
The Ontario Council of Hospital Unions and SEIU Healthcare have sent a letter to Premier Doug Ford outlining a number of actions they say the province should take to reduce labour shortages in health care.
Those include repealing Bill 124, provincial legislation introduced in 2019 that limits wage increases in public-sector contracts to one per cent a year Those provisions were set to remain in effect for three years,and Ford has recently said he would take inflation into consideration during upcoming contract negotiations.
Neither the provincial government nor the OHA immediately responded to a request for comment.
Some Ontario hospitals warned earlier this month that emergency department closures could be a recurring issue this summer, particularly for those in smaller communities.
Communities such as Perth, Clinton, Listowel and Wingham have recently seen ERs close for hours or even days.
The OHA has previously pointed to staff shortages and capacity issues, saying these are causing backlogs across the hospital system. It said rural and northern Ontario were particularly affected.
Organizations representing doctors and nurses have repeatedly said workers are burned out, with many leaving their jobs as a result.
Those sentiments were echoed by the unions and two nurses in a news conference Thursday.
"We're breaking down, the entire system is breaking down," said Justine Champagne, a frontline nurse at a Toronto-area hospital and member of SEIU Healthcare. Champagne said nurses typically care for four to five patients at a time, but that number has now risen to as many as seven due to understaffing.
She said it's also "not rare" for nurses to be called back into work as they're heading home from an eight-to-12-hour shift.