Workers need protection from violence, says CUPE

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This article was published 10/04/2010 (5889 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Workers in hospitals, personal care homes and women’s shelters face violence on the job, and one of the province’s biggest unions wants the Selinger government to take notice.

"People don’t go to work to be hit, kicked, spit on, punched, slapped. That’s unacceptable and that happens," said Michael Skaftfeld, president of the Manitoba division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

Occasionally the violence is extreme.

Skaftfeld said he knows of one personal care home employee who required dental surgery and reconstructive surgery on her jaw — missing three and a half months of work — after she was assaulted by a patient.

At its convention this week, CUPE Manitoba, representing 25,000 workers in health care, education and social service, as well as municipal workers, passed a resolution calling on the province to take steps to make workplaces safer.

A government spokeswoman said in an email Friday the province will take a close look at the resolution when it receives it. She pointed out a workplace safety and health regulation "requires employers to implement a violence-prevention policy. Part of that policy must include procedures to report incidents of violence (to the employer) and procedures to investigate those incidents."

CUPE wants the province to ensure reporting procedures are improved — and it wants to see public and workplace safety education programs put in place to draw attention to the issue.

In the health care field, Skaftfeld said, many incidents are not reported because employees "have come to accept" workplace violence "as part of their job."

In addition to abuse directed at health and personal care home workers, educational assistants dealing with special needs students are also occasionally the targets of violence, the union leader said.

He said that in many instances staffing shortages are to blame. Special needs kids who require someone with them full-time may only have an aide for part of the day. Health care aides are often not replaced if someone calls in sick, so that eight people on a shift may do the work of 10.

The three-day CUPE Manitoba annual meeting wraps up this morning. Premier Greg Selinger addressed the convention on Thursday and federal NDP Leader Jack Layton spoke on Friday.

In his speech, Layton decried the raiding of Employment Insurance funds by the federal government as well as a series of corporate tax cuts that now exceed the value of social transfers to the provinces.

He applauded the Selinger government’s decision to delay corporate tax cuts to help protect public services. And he held up the Manitoba NDP government as an example that could be followed by a Canadian government led by New Democrats.

"It’s time to export the Manitoba model to the rest of Canada," he said.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca