Letter: Government not respecting CCAC workers

On Jan. 30, more than 3,000 Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) health-care workers (296 locally) voted to strike after rejecting an offer which does not match the rate of inflation (two per cent total increase over two years). This follows a contract in which wages were frozen for two years.

I also work in the health-care sector as a hospital employee and understand what these employees are experiencing. We are always asked to do more with less, treating more and sicker patients, while experiencing erosion of our wages from contracts that do not even keep pace with inflation.

How long can the health-care system continue to reduce real wages while demanding fewer staff treat more and sicker patients? A continuous and sustained attack on health-care workers does not lead to a sustainable health-care system.

There are financial difficulties in our health-care system, but the people who have chosen health care as a career are not to blame for the province’s financial situation.

Perhaps this government could stop treating health-care workers as the scapegoat for the financial situation that it finds itself in. Why is it that the government always has billions of dollars for corporate scandals and corporate tax breaks?

The employees of the CCACs must find the current offer particularly insulting in light of the fact that many CCAC CEOs have been rewarded by the government with salary increases as high as 50 per cent in the last three years (highest raised was $91K bringing salaries into the $200-$300 thousand range).

I find it outrageous that our government lavishly rewards CEOs for cutting services and care, and then states that it cannot afford to pay a 1.4 per cent increase to the front-line workers.

The brain trust in the government who thinks that forcing a strike is a great way to save money is wrong. Yes, forcing the strike saves money, but doing so at the expense of ill and dying patients in our community is wrong.

Forcing the strike demonstrates how little respect the government and administrators have for these employees and the care they co-ordinate/provide. It also demonstrates how little respect they have for the patients and their families who depend on these supportive community-based services in order to live and die with dignity in their homes.

Support these health-care workers who are fighting to maintain a living wage. They are fighting for their wages but they are also willing to fight for their patients. These strikers will support you and your mother, father, brother, sister, child, friend, partner, relative, when they are in need of care. So support them as they fight for fairness.

I applaud the CCAC workers for making the difficult choice to fight for a fair contract. I understand that the CEO of our local CCAC just got back from vacationing in Mexico (according to a press release from the Ontario Nurses Association).

Hopefully he will make a sincere effort to put an end to this completely unnecessary disruption of services to the people of northeastern Ontario. Let’s get these health professionals off the sidewalk and back to caring for patients.

Todd Warren
respiratory therapist
Sudbury