Health-care support workers 'not feeling the love' from province as strike looms

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said Thursday nobody loves health-care aides more than he does, but as thousands of them prepare to walk off the job in early October, they say they're not feeling the love back from the provincial government. 

"That was a real slap in the face, a real slap in the face," said Tracey Drexler, an operating room assistant at the Victoria Hospital.

Kinew's comments came during a press conference where the province said it had staffed 873 net new positions — 290 of which are health-care aides — as the provincial government nears its target of hiring 1,000 new health-care workers throughout the year. 

In the backdrop of that announcement, 25,000 health-care support workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union are poised to strike Oct. 8, unless the government dishes out an acceptable contract offer before then. 

Kinew said Thursday he hopes the current offer is accepted. 

"This deal is 2½ times more than the last deal that health-care has got," Kinew said during the press conference. "There's more money on the table. More health-care aides working in the system and more help is coming."

When asked how the premier arrived at that figure, a spokesperson for Shared Health told CBC they couldn't speak to the specific details of the offer, other than to say "its total value is 2.5 times that of the last collective agreement."

Kinew also said Manitoba's NDP government has "taken steps to make life more affordable" and said health-care aides will save "at least" $10 a week because of the gas tax holiday, which was extended until the end of the year Wednesday.

With the provincial gas tax set at 14 cents per litre, in order to save $10, a driver would have to purchase 71.4 litres of gas per week. 

But Drexler said some of her colleagues can't even afford cars.

"We just want a living wage," said Drexler, who has worked in the sector for over two decades, spending the last two years at the Victoria Hospital. "When I started this job, I could live comfortably. Now with a second job, I am barely putting food on the table." 

CUPE health-care co-ordinator Shannon McAteer said the strike mandate "speaks volumes," because some workers who make $17 an hour are "willing to put it on the line." 

"They're willing to go on strike to get what they deserve, get the respect, get the recognition, get the wages and working conditions that they desperately deserve," she said. 

Some support staff looking for new jobs 

In a news release Thursday, CUPE said it surveyed more than 5,000 health-care support workers as part of a bargaining survey done in March. 

The survey said nearly 50 per cent of health care support workers have been, or plan to, look for a new job, according to responses from workers in the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, Shared Health, Southern Health-Santé Sud and the Northern Regional Health Authority.

The report also said around 65 per cent of respondents looking for a new job were looking outside the public health care system entirely. The report also found only 28 per cent of health-care aides reported staffing levels were sufficient to provide proper care to patients, residents or clients.

Additionally, around 75 per cent of workers surveyed reported working short-staffed once or more a week. 

"They're not feeling the love," McAteer said. "I think that's the way of saying it." 

Kathleen Cook, the health critic for the Opposition Manitoba Progressive Conservatives, also said retention is a "critical part of what the NDP needs to focus on." 

McAteer said she remains hopeful a deal can be reached, but isn't feeling optimistic about that happening before Oct. 8. 

"Health care used to be an employer of choice and now they are not," she said.

"People are looking to get out of health care, so announcing today that they're so happy or pleased or they think they've done amazing to fix the crisis and health care, that's what doesn't give me a lot of optimism because we just don't see it." 

Meanwhile, Drexler said walking off the job isn't something support workers take lightly. 

"We all know that it's going to be the patients that are going to suffer and the caregivers that are going to suffer and the people who depend on home care to live their lives and go to work that aren't going to have that home care coming to help them out of bed in the morning," she said. 

"And it weighs heavy on us, this is not something that we do easily."