WRHA altering 700 support jobs

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This article was published 12/09/2017 (2958 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Unions say support workers will be left scrambling to find new child care arrangements and pay their bills this fall, as the first phase of Winnipeg’s drastic overhaul to health-care delivery begins in earnest.

On Tuesday, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority finally offered up an indication of how many front-line support staff will be affected in Phase 1 — after unions spent the summer pressing for details on how the changes would impact the jobs ranging from health-care aides and dieticians to housekeeping and maintenance workers.

But even that seemed to inflame instead of assuage simmering concerns.

Some 700 workers at St. Boniface Hospital, Grace Hospital and Victoria General Hospital will receive notice of job changes, the WRHA said, although it can’t yet specify what such change might mean.

Will they move units or move hospitals? Will their hours drop from full-time to part-time? Will people lose daytime rotations and now be made to work nights or evenings or some combination?

“Anyone that’s telling you this is going to be good for patient care is selling you snake oil,” said Jeff Traeger, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers local 832, which represents roughly 400 affected support staff at St. Boniface.

Although the WRHA says it doesn’t expect to be handing out deletion notices to those staff until at least Thursday, new schedule rotations were posted in the hospital Tuesday morning. Based on the posts, the union says most members will be losing their straight daytime rotations and have to transition into a shift that combines day-evening, day-night, or full-time night shifts.

“Daycare spots are at a premium in the city, so (you can’t) expect to just magically snap your fingers,” said Traeger. “If I’m a single parent with my five-year-old in daycare, what do I do?”

St. Boniface staff won’t transition to their new roles until Dec. 1, but roughly 150 staff at Victoria and 150 at Grace will transition in mid-October.

Individual meetings with staff to select their new roles based on seniority are scheduled to start the week of Sept. 25. That means staff will only have a few weeks to adjust personal obligations to their new work schedules.

The new schedule rotations will remain posted for staff to see and presentations to answer questions will be made at both facilities.

That process will be somewhat similar to the one the nurses are going through with a few differences, explained Karlee Blatz, the WRHA’s senior labour relations counsel. The nursing transition involves three distinct processes: staff pick their positions; subsequent to that, vacancies are posted; then using seniority to bump is allowed.

However, with support workers, that entire process has been condensed. If a more-senior support worker chooses to bump a less-senior staffer, that person will then be “slotted into the selection meetings based on their seniority,” with at least 24 hours notice, and presented with their options.

“Knowing that you may be displaced,” Blatz said, “we’d like staff to take a look at what opportunities might be interesting to them ahead of time.”

Blatz said the WRHA still doesn’t know about whether there will be layoffs. However, the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union (MGEU) shot back that the posted schedule rotations make it pretty clear there will be.

MGEU represents support staff at Victoria, which the WRHA has repeatedly said will require slightly less staffing in the interim while it undergoes extensive renovations to build a more comprehensive mental health-care unit. But MGEU president Michelle Gawronsky alleged as many as 40 jobs could be cut.

It’s math, Gawronsky told reporters Tuesday. Around 155 members received deletion notices, she said, while just 115 positions were included in the new schedule postings.

Even if some of those staff are moving to new facilities, she said the union has “been unable to get any assurances” about their jobs. Also concerning, she said, is the fact many of the new positions are no longer full-time.

“Most of them have gone from full-time to part-time work, so again folks are not guaranteed a full-time income,” Gawronsky said.

A spokeswoman for the WRHA said the new rotations include full- and part-time work, although she was unable to answer questions by the end of the day about what the ratio of full to part-time work will be as compared with current staffing levels.

Gawronsky said she’s still hoping for a promised meeting with Manitoba Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen. She wants the government’s assurances there will be a job for every front-line worker who wants one.

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca