Okotoks home-care workers join province-wide walk out

Okotoks home-care workers walked off the job Monday morning as part of a province-wide protest against Alberta Health Services cuts and changes.

Health-care workers across Alberta formed picket lines Oct. 26 in response to plans announced by the Province to save $600 million per year by outsourcing laundry, housekeeping, food preparation and laboratory services to businesses. The plan would also phase out at least 100 management jobs.

Members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) went on strike to protest those plans, including a 100 per cent walk-out of Okotoks Home Care employees, who belong to the AUPE Local 45, Chapter 5. There was also picketing at High River Hospital.

“Our members are on strike to save their jobs,” said Karen Weiers, vice-president of AUPE, adding other reasons include fighting the privatization of health care and resolving the increasing crisis of short-staffing in medical facilities. “These workers are being pushed to their breaking point.”

She said home-care workers have been threatened with the prospect of privatization, along with laboratory, housekeeping, food and linen services.

There is no telling how long the job action may last, she said, from a protest site in Lethbridge.

“That will be for the members to decide,” said Weiers. “These workers have been on the edge for well over a year.”

The announcement by Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro two weeks ago on outsourcing services to the private sector indicated between 9,700 and 11,000 AHS employees would be laid off in the process, and created a sense of unease among health-care workers, she said.

Workers have already been facing anxiety with COVID-19 as they work the front-lines through the pandemic, and now they have additional stress wondering whether they’ll have a job when it’s all over, she said.

“I don’t think there’s anybody in health care who feels safe right now,” said Weiers. “This announcement was reckless and provocative and there’s some real anger that has been there, and that ignited a spark, which flared up today.”

She said the changes are taking health care down a dangerous path toward privatization, going against the platform of the UCP government, which promised it would uphold the public health system.

“I’m sure from the horns that are honking from where I am right now, that this isn’t what the people of Alberta want,” said Weiers. “They want public health care.”

In a statement, AHS announced it was responding quickly to the illegal strike action and addressing interruptions to patient care as well as possible.

“Our focus is on ensuring patients continue to receive the care and treatment they need,” the AHS statement reads, noting all sites remain open.

Non-union staff is being redeployed to cover for missing staff, and some surgeries and ambulatory care clinics are being postponed. Those patients affected are being called directly, said AHS.

“We have reached out to staff to ask them to return to work and end the illegal strike. AHS has made an application to the Labour Relations Board today to formally ask the board to direct the affected employees back to work.”

The job action is being criticized by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), which released a statement supporting the move by AHS to privatize some services rather than continuing to run them in-house.

“It’s common sense to let local businesses take care of laundry and catering and we definitely can’t afford office buildings full of managers managing managers,” said Franco Terrazzano, Alberta director of the CTF, calling the changes common-sense ways to keep Alberta’s healthcare system sustainable.

Krista Conrad, OkotoksToday.ca